Neither Purge nor Coup

Isn’t this the same guy who predicted that Putin’s second term wouldn’t last a year?

Good old Anders “I think putting ‘economic advisor to Yeltsin’ on my CV looks good” Aslund.

No mention of the advantage to Western governments who are locked in battle with Putin over Iran, Kosovo, OSCE energy etc etc and who consistently seek to discredit Putin. It is to say the least curious that a year or so ago Putin only had to set foot outside the Kremlin and something that discredited him and Russia happened. Coincidence perhaps. Putin has a reputation as honest and patriotic. Who would prefer to see him portrayed as just another Yeltsin without the vodka?

The other thing that is striking is that practically everything the Western media has said about Putin and Russia since 2000 has been wrong – present company excepted of course. Putin was an over promoted cretin from the KGB, he was the pawn of the oligarchs, he would revise the constitution and serve a third term, Russia was/is an economic basket case etc etc. So what is being said at the moment stands a very good chance of being wrong again.

My own view is that the immediate aim is to secure a safe transfer of power in the face of the danger of possible Western attempts to take advantage of a hiatus of power. Putin has already avoided a lame duck end of his presidential term, an achievement in itself.

I think what Aslund overlooks two things.

First is that Putin values loyatly above all else: he tolerates incompetence and theft as long as people swear allegience to him.

The second point flows from the first: when people do mess up or need to be ‘fired’, he moves them on to nice little sinecures, buying their silence. Even Nazdratenko – surely one of the most corrupt and incompetent governors (which is saying something)- ended up as vice secretary of the security council.

We will see the same again during the changeover. No doubt Sechin et al are competing with one another, and many will be moved on, but the deal will be the same in the end: step down and take a nice position out of the limelight but still in the ’system. Then, you can live off everything you’ve taken and maybe even make some more, whilst retaining status and perks. Just don’t come out in public and make trouble.

These guys are pretty bright – they know how it works, and I’m sure the changeover will be far less interesting than some think. There will be no coups or purges in the sense he believes.

“There will be no coups or purges in the sense he believes.”

I don’t think Aslund does believe it. I think he just states it.

Wait a seconf here Sean. You write:

“If the 1990s were as traumatic to the Putinistas as some claim,”

The claim that the 90s were ultratraumatic is not just some Putinista claim. It is believed by everyone in society because, well, the 1990s _were_ ultratraumatic. The economic collapse, Shock Therapy, hyperinflation, etc. of the 1990s are not fictions made up by the Kremlin.

No, you make perfect sense. I share a suspicion that the Colored Revos echo in the elite and popular minds with the Soviet collapse and ensuing chaos and misery (which people like Aslund, who after all was a Young Reformer who unlike Sachs is still going on, unperturbed, Rasputin-like, in his ideology, want to pretend didn’t happen).

“In fact, I’m starting to think, but have yet to investigate, that the “colored revolutions” reinvoked the trauma of the 1990s in the Kremlin and this is why the response to them has been so over the top.”

Spot on. I began work on Europe and Russia in the middle of the coloured revolutions. I arrived with the standard western european mental baggage except that i had been deeply shocked by the attack on Serbia over Kosovo. My initial work informing myself caused me to completely change my views. I was particularly impressed by the views of Prof Jones of the University of New York. Roughly speaking what we have is NATO and friends 800 million rich people versus Russia 150 million poor people and I was expected to believe that it was the Russians who were making the threats and causing the problems.

In addition, as I think I have said here before Nashi is defensive. Dangerous maybe but essentialy defensive.

Another tangential comment on my part. Sean, about Aslund and other analysts, you wrote:

“They think that the Russian propensity for order is genetically coded, while at the same time possesses a similarly genetically encoded conspiratorial mindset that would inevitably disrupt said order.”

This genetic propensity idea is, of course, rubbish. Nonetheless, it seems that some places (like Russia) that have not yet developed a strong civil society are either governed by some sort of authoritarian structure or they fall into a chaos were individualistic interests are the primary force. In other words, it sort of goes from one extreme to another. In such cases, in a defensive reaction, people clamor for order and authority–not because they have authoritarian gene in their bodies, but because only a strong authority can control their hyper-individualism. The key is whether an authoritarian system can be flexible enough to successfully nurture the development o a civil society in order to get out of this predicament (of either authoritarianism or chaos).

A few years, in another forum, a Russian living in Moscow wrote something that I decided to save:

“Both opponents and admirers of
‘westernization’ meant by it unrestrained
greed, egotism, and moral relativism. It
was called ‘individualism’. Whereas
individualism on the West is a useful
antidote to the inherent bourgeois
dominance of the public opinion, which
often suppresses personalities in
conformity with lowest common denominator,
in Russia it went as oil on the flames.
Soviet society was already extremely
individualistic under mask of so-called
‘collectivism’. Die today, I’ll die tomorrow.
The few feeble attempts to organize and
cooperate on any level were at best frowned
upon, and at worst brutally repressed. So we
take extremely individualistic society, we
preach more individualism, we get no society
at all, or an anti-society, an almost
Hobbesian war of each against all.”

I would have preferred it to be otherwise, but I thought his point was quite good.

While I agree with most of what Kolya’s friend says, I am still in the dark on what “civil society” really is.

Chris, “civil society” is sort of like Justice Stewart’s remark on pornography, it’s hard to define but you know it when you see it.

I know you know all that stuff, but to be a bit less facetious here is the link to the Wikepedia entry:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Civil_society

The social and political scientists who read this blog will probably find many faults and disagreements with it. Very roughly, in my own mind (and perhaps wrongly), when I wrote “civil society”, I meant a society where there is a tradition of non-compulsory citizen involvement as well as an abundance of civic organizations independent from the government. A country with a strong civil society is better able to cope with governmental changes and turmoil.

I hope this won’t be a double post.

I know. My issue with the term is that as actually used it doesn’t really usually mean civilian involvement and civic organizations outside the government. What it means is such activity involved in something the commentator approves of. For instance, the Movement Against Illegal Immigration in Russia, or the Minutemen in the States, or pretty clear examples of such movements, but they don’t get called civil society.

I have not read much of anything on this subject, but in my own mind groups such as the Minutemen and the John Birch Society are part of civil society. I abhor those groups, but they are just as part of is as Move On, Public Citizen or Ecology Action.

Do you guys really think the events in Kiev and Tbilisi “reinvoked the trauma of the 1990s in the Kremlin”? In what possible way? What I saw was a Kremlin in shock over its own ineptness, naiveté and poor political intelligence.

The popular reaction in Russia might be a different story, with flashbacks to the chaos of the 90s, but this was largely a result of Kremlin spin. Pavlovsky, who had an awful lot to answer for in Kiev, immediately began yammering about “new revolutionary technologies” and how Russia needed to develop a counter-revolutionary ideology.

Setting the coloured revolutions aside for a moment, the argument here is whether fear of retrogression to 1990s style chaos is or is not a valid justification for authoritarianism. Do you really think it is?

“Setting the coloured revolutions aside for a moment, the argument here is whether fear of retrogression to 1990s style chaos is or is not a valid justification for authoritarianism. Do you really think it is?”

It may be. Authoritarianism is almost always preferable to chaos (cf. Thomas Hobbes). I don’t know if that either/or is actually present in Russia or not.

(Now, I don’t actually care if a given society is “authoritarian” or “democratic” — I care about how its people are living.)

Exactly Sean. Early Fascism is a clear example of civil society. Look at D’Annunzio’s march on Rome.

I like the metaphor of trauma and shock therapy, as if capitalism would cure Russians of the “traumas” of the Soviet system. Maybe this attraction comes from the fact that I just started reading Naomi Klein’s Shock Doctrine.

If you want to progress even an inch further with understanding economics I suggest you rapidly change your reading material. If not, I do hope you don’t further attempt to apply Naomi Klein’s thinking to explain Russia in the 1990s as you have done in the above quoted passage.

“Do you guys really think the events in Kiev and Tbilisi “reinvoked the trauma of the 1990s in the Kremlin”? In what possible way? What I saw was a Kremlin in shock over its own ineptness, naiveté and poor political intelligence.”

If the Kremlin believed that Russia was a target for regime change and balkanisation, it is perfectly possible for there to be “shock over its own ineptness, naiveté and poor political intelligence.” and at the same time fear a return to the chaos 1990s. The two are not mutually exclusive.

If the Kremlin believed that Russia was a target for regime change and balkanisation…

If?!! Has there ever been a time whoever is in the Kremlin didn’t believe this?

Has there ever been a time whoever is in the Kremlin didn’t believe this?

True but the activities of the US in the last few years have given them more than usual reason to be concerned. In a matter of a few years NATO has gone from being a defensive alliance to an extremely aggressive offensive one. The huge expenditure on defense and secret services by the US are also grounds for the most self confident to be jittery. Note that the West’s most independant country France has finally decided under Sarkozy that being friends with the US is safest.

If the Kremlin believed that Russia was a target for regime change and balkanisation, it is perfectly possible for there to be “shock over its own ineptness, naiveté and poor political intelligence.” and at the same time fear a return to the chaos 1990s.

Maybe we need to clarify this. I doubt the Kremlin’s fears re the 90s would be anything like those of ordinary Russians. Mr. Putin, whatever the precise nature and scale of his portfolio, will not be queuing for food or worrying about his rubles at Sberbank, and was not doing so in the 90s. And while, yes, Russians might not much like the idea of regime change or balkanization, the things they would associate with the chaos of the 90s first would be food shortages, late pay, forced devaluations, mob shootings, etc.

To some extent ordinary folks – and some of the readers of this blog it appears — have been persuaded that the politics of the 90s were responsible for the economics of the 90s, when in fact most of the damage was done by oil (and other commodity) prices a fifth or less of what they are now, added to by the collapse of the Comecon common market and vertically integrated monopolies.

CM: (Now, I don’t actually care if a given society is “authoritarian” or “democratic” — I care about how its people are living.)

Keep ‘em fed and entertained? Sorry, I don’t buy it. I think you probably DO care – not about the nature of the political system exactly, but that there BE some kind of political system conceding legitimacy to various forms of dissent.

“I doubt the Kremlin’s fears re the 90s would be anything like those of ordinary Russians. Mr. Putin, whatever the precise nature and scale of his portfolio, will not be queuing for food or worrying about his rubles at Sberbank, and was not doing so in the 1990s.”

I wasn’t queuing up for food in the 1990s either. In fact I have never queued up for food. However, I care about people who have to. Putin, on the other hand, HAS had to queue up for food, given as he comes from a poor (in the Soviet sense) family from Leningrad whose brother died as an infant in the Siege. I find it quite believable he would care about such things, though I cannot know for sure.

I have a theory that the idea that “the people at the top of the political system are always utterly cynical,” whether applied to Bush, Putin, Blair or whoever, and which is a near-dogma in some circles, is one of the things that poison poliical discourse.

“when in fact most of the damage was done by oil (and other commodity) prices a fifth or less of what they are now”

Please don’t present a highly debated proposition as fact. In any case 1992 hyperinflation and rigged privatizations to gangsters were not a result of low commodity prices — they were the result of a deliberate strategy. (To preempt the objection, no, economic collapse was not the goal of the strategy.)

“Keep ‘em fed and entertained?”

Isn’t that the goal of modern, non-theocratic and non-ideological societies? The form of government is a means to the end of maintaining of the well-being, however that is defined, of the citizenry.

“I think you probably DO care – not about the nature of the political system exactly, but that there BE some kind of political system conceding legitimacy to various forms of dissent.”

I’ll put it this way — if I should happen to wander someday into a benevolent, prosperous dictatorship that bans Hallmark cards, I am not going to join the partisan forces to fight for their right to send Hallmark cards.

“Authoritarianism,” by which I mean here political systems in which decision-making is implemented from the “top,” is not incompatible with permission of dissent anyway.

“I don’t know why its forgotten that every 20th century “authoritarian system” relied on mobilizing the masses to actively participate in the “authority” of that system.”

Because that fact is incompatible with the current ideology?

This reminds me that we have to remember that the soviet system provided a great amount of social mobility over generations and for individuals.

To be fair, the US and UK do this pretty well too, despite what people generally think. The backgrounds and careers of Condi Rice and Maggie Thatcher are worth looking at in that regard.

Please don’t present a highly debated proposition as fact. In any case 1992 hyperinflation and rigged privatizations to gangsters were not a result of low commodity prices — they were the result of a deliberate strategy. (To preempt the objection, no, economic collapse was not the goal of the strategy.)

The collapse had already happened. The official ruble rate was unsustainable, foreign exchange reserves were red-lining and the treasury was broke. What should have happened next is debatable, and obviously shouldn’t have been what DID happen. But the Yeltsin gang and political plurality did not bankrupt the state.

I don’t know why its forgotten that every 20th century “authoritarian system” relied on mobilizing the masses to actively participate in the “authority” of that system.

Er, depends what you mean by “mobilizing,” doesn’t it? The concept of “informed consent” enters into this. Coerced or misinformed consent surely don’t count, so that removes a few “presidents-for-life” etc from your generalization.

But, acknowledging that Russia is not one of these exceptions – popular support is real – the question moves to the treatment of dissent. As CM suggests, there is always dissent, whether it’s over how high to set the district heating temperature or to permit senior public officials to pull in megabucks as company directors. The ruling elite, however, has narrowed the field for the public expression of dissent and also applied restrictive rules on what it regards as extremism. And that’s what we’re debating here. I think it’s gone way too far. Apparently you don’t.

“Putin, on the other hand, HAS had to queue up for food, given as he comes from a poor (in the Soviet sense) family from Leningrad whose brother died as an infant in the Siege. I find it quite believable he would care about such things, though I cannot know for sure.”

There is an interesting story about Putin that came out when, as President, when visiting Angela Merkel in 2006. According to an AFP report, a former Stasi agent who had a flat on the same landing in Dresden recalled that, after the Berlin wall fell, a crowd of angry German demonstrators arrived at the KGB barracks where he worked and demanded to see the archives. According to the AFP reporter, the Stasi man recalled “passing himself off as an interpreter, he told the crowd in excellent German that he would rather die than open up the KGB’s files to the public. ‘And when he said something, he would do it,’ said the former Stasi man admiringly.” In my view it is an error to underestimate the patriot in Putin. The idea that he is merely a new style oligarch on the take does not seem to fit what is known about him.

“The ruling elite, however, has narrowed the field for the public expression of dissent and also applied restrictive rules on what it regards as extremism. And that’s what we’re debating here. I think it’s gone way too far. Apparently you don’t.”

Were Sovietskaya Rossiya and Zavtra and New Times shut down while I wasn’t looking?

I think the “dissent has been shut down” meme relies on the presupposition that there is a lot of dissent (which I suppose here means “dislike of the government”). It is obvious that there is not a lot of dislike of the government being expressed. If one excepts the presupposition that there is a lot of dissent, then the, or a, logical explanation for its absence is that it has been “shut down” by some external force.

On the other hand, the original presupposition may be incorrect, a notion that is hard for some people to deal with, espescially those who have mistaken the norms of their own society for human universals (and have a lot of emotion invested in that notion).

No, this doesn’t require any presupposition at all about levels of support for dissent. That would be absurd. By definition, dissent begins as a minority view, even an individual and idiosyncratic view. Nor do I presuppose that a large number of Russians dislike the government.

Which is why I believe the ruling elite has spun the coloured revs to its own advantage, tapping into and exploiting inchoate popular fear of chaos.

With regard to the concept of local norms mistaken for universals, without getting into all the arcane nonsense spouted by the neo-libs and neo-cons and whatnot, you are right in your inference that I think freedom of expression is a universal – Article 19 and all that. Political elites need to be held to it – though, here, you and I would probably agree that the primary defenders need to be local not foreign.

I dodn’t mean to imply that you necessarily believe that — I do however think that it is the subtext of a lot of commentary.

Yeah, you’re right about that. The commentary, that is. Over-reliance on guys in suits who happen to speak English, maybe.

But, Sean, you, Kolya, Tim and the other regulars, are essential correctives to this. I don’t get a chance to get on as much as I’d like — day job and all – but when I do I am always the wiser for it. So thanks for that. Hope I don’t sound too imbecilic.

FH, I have not been in Russia since Yeltsin’s time, so I cannot claim much first hand knowledge of what’s going on there now. I have to say, though, that in this thread I find your comments the most insightful.

One more thing about upward mobility. The extent of upward mobility in pre-revolutionary Russia, especially during the last few decades, was not trivial and was quickly accelerating.

Kolya – How did social mobility work before the revolution? Via business? Was it meritocratic or through patronage?

I don’t believe it.

On the subject of freedom of expression, and CM’s comment about Sovietskaya Rossiya and Zavtra and New Times, Bob Amsterdam points to a piece about press freedom: http://www.robertamsterdam.com/2008/01/discussing_russias_freedom_of.htm

Exaggerated? Totally off the wall? Accurate?

Kolya – How did social mobility work before the revolution? Via business? Was it meritocratic or through patronage?

It is well known that Khruschev came from a humble background, growing up in a peasant hut. What is less wll known is that he did extremely well for himself in the last few years of the Tsarist regime in what later came to be called Donetsk; he was what nowadays would be called a Yuppie. Had the Revolution not happened, Khruschev would have still been a success, regardless of his background.

Really? I thought he was a union guy in the Donbass mines. He was a Boss?

Interesting. As an historian, how good do you think the research has been on Krushchev’s life? Any sense how fortunate future biographers will be with Putin (noting Robert Harneis’ anecdote about the KGB files above)?

I’m not in much of a position to judge such things, but I thought Taubman’s biography of Khruschev was outstanding, and the level or research incredible.

“Exaggerated? Totally off the wall? Accurate?”

What do you mean? Sure you can find people in Russia who aren’t in favor of a few press* — you can find them in all countries.

*We’d have to define what we mean by “free press” though. I assume here it means “not censored by the government.”

Sean – I vaguely recall some talk at some point about a Yeltsin library. I think the Yeltsin Foundation was discussing it. Are you aware whether anything happened?

CM – Is the article reflective of a wider reality? If so, how wide? And if you were a Russian journo, what would you do about it?

fh –

I’m really not sure how to answer your question. I think when most (or a lot of) Russians talk about a “free press,” what they are thinking about is the Yeltsin-era use of the media in the oligarch wars, where media outlet A run by oilgarch X spent all its time broadcasting compromising information/lies about oligarch Y, and oligarch Y’s media outlet B did the same in return.

Also, I think when a lot of people in Russia talk in favor of censoring the media, what they are talking about is violence and sex on television, not political topics.

CM – Yes, you’re probably right on both counts. Anyway, it’s not a particularly good moment in the history of western journalism to be lecturing Russians about their media.

By the way, what’s the real story behind Russia Journal? Were you around at the end?

FH, I’m not a historian, but the fact that there was upward mobility with an increasingly accelerated tempo in pre-revolutionary Russia is indisputable. It was not comparable to the US of that time and there were certainly plenty of injustices and things of that sort.

Russia’s economy in those last decades was expanding very rapidly. It was precisely during this period in which, as Sean noted, many members of the dvoriantsvo (gentry) were experiencing downward mobility. Even if willy-nilly the old regime had no choice but to make upward mobility much easier in order to somehow stay competitive with the other powers. This is not to say that the gentry, which consisted of only about 2 percent of the population, was not overrepresented at the top. There is no denying, though, that during the late several decades of the Tsarist regime upward mobility was not rare. Moreover, it was accelerating.

Have you read or seen Chekhov’s “The Cherry Orchard”? The social dynamics of a new Russian reality in which a stale gentry was giving way to a new and more enterprising class of men is the backdrop of this play. Chekhov (1860-1904), a medical doctor, was himself the grandson of a former serf.

For peasants to become Siberian settlers was another vehicle for advancement. Maybe some of you have read Chekhov’s writings and letters about his trip to Sakhalin. Several times he contrasts the Siberian settlers with peasants of central Russia. He even remarks about the size, prosperity and even cleanliness of the homes of the Siberian settlers.

Social advancement through the army was another way. While during the Napoleonic War the vast majority of Russian officers were members of the gentry, by the end of the 19th Century only about half of them were. In a book about the Eastern front during World War I (1914-17), British historian Norman Stone stated that in Russia “the army was a vehicle for social mobility, and not, as in Germany, a refuge from it.” The fathers of both General Alekseev, the army’s Commander in Chief when the Tsar abdicated, and General Denikin, who commanded the White Army in southern Russia, were serfs who were conscripted as soldiers and rose to officer rank. According to Norman Stone, in 1902 the composition of the infantry military academies (that produced new officers) was 40 percent gentry, 23 percent peasant, and the rest were of the soslovie in between.

One more and I have to go. Russian historian Sergei Volkov writes 23 percent of university students in 1897 were members of the gentry. By 1915 it was less than 10 percent. The vast majority of university students were not members of the gentry and their proportion was dropping rather quickly.

Kolya and Sean – Fascinating. One can imagine fast rising expectations then running smack into WWI. Back then all the various brands and shades of socialism were essentially aspirational.

Excellent stuff fellas, great comment Kolya.

Thanks, Tim.

Sean, my guess is that WWI intensified what was already a strong trend. I don’t know what to say about the discrepancies in the numbers of Morrissey and Volkov. Perhaps the reason is that her numbers deal with St. Petersburg and Volkov’s with all of Russia. This is only a guess on my part. Considering that that’s where the court was, it is reasonable to assume that the students in St. Petersburg where of a socially higher strata when compared to students in, say, Kharkov (which was known as a university town).

Okay, I think I just figured out one reason behind the variation of numbers. It seems that Volkov counted as gentry only those whose parents belonged to the hereditary gentry. The so-called “lichnie dvoranie” did not have hereditary status (although if during their careers they reached a certain position in the Table of Ranks they gained hereditary status–which, I believe, is how Ulianov, Lenin’s father, became part of the hereditary gentry.) Going back to the students, according to a table in Volkov’s book in 1906 the parents of 48 percent of unviersity students belonged to the gentry, but only a quarter of them (12 percent) where actually members of the hereditary gentry. It seems that there is some (but not dramatic) difference between the numbers that Volkov gives in the text and the ones in the table.

As to the military, keep in mind that if around 1900 only about half of the officers belonged to the gentry, virtually all officers who served in the Guard Regiments (primarily posted around St. Petersburg) where of the gentry.

Okay, enough! My home just quieted down, my daughter’s friends just left, so now I’m going back to the living room…

One can imagine fast rising expectations then running smack into WWI.

One can go considerably further, all the way to 1917. After the February Revolution, Russia briefly become the most liberal country in the world. The Temporary gov’t was dedicated to international socialism doctrines and the ‘War to Victorious End’. Elections were scheduled in one year, with SD party widely expected to obtain the majority. Germany was going down and if Russia would manage to stay in the Entente for just one more year it would emerge from WWI as an important partner in the victorious coalition, with new progressive gov’t and monarchy a thing of the past. All the enormous sacrifices would pay off.

Germany has sued for peace in November 1918. Unfortunately, in November 1917 Bolsheviks commited their coup and quickly surrendered to Germany, taking Russia out of the Entente and the civilized world for 70 years…

Sean, if you’re interested in the future of presidential libraries in Russia, you should check out articles here, here and here (thank you, Russian Google News!) about a bill recently introduced by Sprav. Rossiia to establish them for all ex-Russian presidents in the future (interestingly, the terms of the draft bill seem to exclude Yeltsin, but perhaps he’s already taken care of).

“While during the Napoleonic War the vast majority of Russian officers were members of the gentry, by the end of the 19th Century only about half of them were.”

I am not saying this is wrong but I wonder if it is right. In Britain as the Napoleonic wars reached their climax there was a growing number of ‘middle class’ officers in the army. By the end anybody who brought in 100 recruits was given one. The Russian army was much bigger. Were there really that many aristocratic young men to fill the junior officer ranks of the army in these long and bloody wars? As wars progress, generally speaking, age gives way to youth and status to competence.

“By the way, what’s the real story behind Russia Journal? Were you around at the end?”

I was there from late 2000 to late 2003. I won’t discuss former employers in public fora though.

I have heard it claimed (without any evidence being adduced) that the pre-WW I economic growth in Russia was mostly the product of rapid demographic growth, with lots of people being thrown into the work force. Is there any truth to this?

Robert, you raise a good point. I certainly never researched the issue and can only parrot what I read. Keep in mind that the dvorianstvo estate in Russia was not as rigid as the nobility in other countries. In any event, “gentry” or “nobility” are not exact translations of what the dvorianstvo was, and many of those who belonged to it were actually not that well off at all. I may be wrong, but I think the dvoriane consisted of about two percent of the population. Perhaps that proportion was enough to populate most of the officer corps.

I just checked a book on Amazon by Alexander Mikaberidze about the Russian officer corps during the Napoleonic Wars. A chart on the book says that 86.5 percent of Russian officers in 1812 belonged to the dvorianstvo. As I already wrote, this proportion dropped considerably as the XIX century progressed–especially after the death of Nikolai I.

In terms of Russian economic growth, I think it has a lot do with the fact that Russian factories were the most modern in the world, especially in the metal and manufacturing and large sums of capital were being dumped into them.

Didn’t the Russians simply buy in a lot of the machinery for their factories (which would explain why they were the most modern in the world)? I was very interested to read that the town that is now Donetsk, where Khruschev started out his career, was originally called Yuzovka after the Welshman John Hughes who founded it in 1869. Hughes had been contracted by the tsarist government to build various industries in the region, which makes perfect sense given that a Welshman would have had considerable exposure to mining and steelworking industries.

“I think it has a lot do with the fact that Russian factories were the most modern in the world, especially in the metal and manufacturing and large sums of capital were being dumped into them.”

What do you think of the whole Trotskyist “uneven development” notion?

“Hughesovka” — exactly right. (Thanks Tim. Good tip, leading to a fascinating foray via Google. I love these stories.) His was the company behind the British navy’s fleet of “ironclads”. Yuzovka was a classic company town, complete with an Anglican church.

http://www.gtj.org.uk/en/item10/30128

Interesting that (according to that link) most of the Welsh workers went home after the revolution, but apparently some remained. Wonder if their descendants are traceable.

“I was particularly impressed by the views of Prof Jones of the University of New York”

About fifty comments ago i made this rather strange comment. I actually meant Prof Cohen Stephen F. Not quite the same.

What do you think of the whole Trotskyist “uneven development” notion?

Interesting question. Trotsky noted that what we now call under-developed economies modernize by adopting the latest technologies, skipping all the intervening stages advanced economies went through, but making themselves ever-more vulnerable to decisions by the the advanced economies, as owners of the intellectual and other capital.

(CM: please feel free to correct me on this. It’s been a few decades since my last economics classes.)

So — the first question is: Did Trotsky develop this theory based on direct observations of what was going on in Donetsk and elsewhere in late-Tsarist Russia? Almost certainly. The underlying observation looks accurate. It can be seen in action all the time. Parts of the Russian telecommunications system are now among the most advanced in the world, without having had to go through several generations of development from analog to digital.

Question 2: Was he correct in his assessment that the original owners of the intellectual property would be apt to exert undue negative influence on the host economy? More specifically, did foreign owners of intellectual and other forms of capital (ie, guys like our Welshman above) play a malign role in the lead-up to the revolution?

Short answer: Don’t know. What do the historians say?

Behind the darker periods of history, one can always find a Welshman.

“(CM: please feel free to correct me on this. It’s been a few decades since my last economics classes.) ”

I have a copy of Results and Prospects/Permanent Revolution on my shelf. Much as a find reading Trotsky to be painful, I think I’ll skim through them again to verify.

Behind the darker periods of history, one can always find a Welshman.

You’ll normally find us behind a sheep or two as well.

Evil sheep.

Baaaaaaa-d sheep.

As I catch up on this thread, I return to thinking that often they lend themselves to a entirely new topic or blog posting. In other words, the topic wanders to something else, but still an interesting topic.

This thread is better cited than most.

If Mr. Newman objects to Naomi Klein’s Shock Doctrine: The Rise of Disaster Capitalism, I’m sure he would completely pop a cork over Jules Boykoff’s Beyond Bullets: The Suppression of Dissent in the United States that I was reading on my recent trip to Phoenix.

I have no idea who Jules Boykoff is, but I very much doubt I would pop a cork over anything he has written, completely or partially.

My objections to Naomi Klein are based on the conclusion I reached after reading her newspaper columns over the course of 3 years, which is that she is economically illiterate. For somebody who has chosen writing about economics as a career, this is a serious shortcoming.

putin is staying on because without him the system he put in place will devour itself inside out. there r too many competing power cliques that would love to control the purse strings, and putin rightly fears that without a stabilizing demi-god-like figure the whole governing edifice will collapse. i don’t think putin wants to stay on, as prime-minister or in any other capacity, but his hand was forced by the state model he created. that’s why u can criticize anybody in russia, but not the president. even calling supporters rallies putings and the supporters themselves putinists, can get one in a sport of trouble with law enforcement. it’s not because putin is personally vain. it’s just he understands that to juggle the competing interests of the elites, the umpire must be revered and stay beyond reproach. putin also understands that in russia authority is institutional, not personal, so medvedev will amass all the piety and veneration befitting his status as ruler of all great, little, and white russia etc etc etc, pretty soon after taking the oath of office. but this interregnum, between putin stepping down and medevedev feeling fully in control, is dangerous for the system putin built, so vvp will stick around for a while as guarantor of stability before medvedev can rule in his own right. sort of what sophia did, when her brother ivan was too demented, and half-brother peter too young, to rule. the problem with her, she overstayed her welcome, and was shipped off to a convent. i’m pretty sure putin won’t repeat that mistake and will bow out when the times comes.

That was a strange mix of incoherent grammar and orthography, on the one hand, and very good sense, on the other.

coherent grammar is in the eye of the beholder, as they say.

“but his hand was forced by the state model he created”

Astana.kz I agree with your analysis but it would be interesting to know whether you think that Putin has any choice in the model he created, given the dire circumstances he inherited. Statements by Western commentators that assume that he could have and ought to have turned Russia into a western european style democracy seem to me unrealistic.

robert, fully concur. he could not have built a full-blown western-style body politic in russia even if he wanted to, which i believe he did want to, at least in the beginning. however, consensus had been reached among the emerging new elite that russia could not be thrown head-on into the pool of democracy and expected to swim unassisted. they believed that a life preserver and other flotation devices would be needed to prevent russia’s going straight to the bottom like a rock. thus the control of the media, thus the managed elections. has some of that been taken to ridiculous extremes? sure it has. as gogol used to say, fools and bad roads r russia’s twin banes. and bureaucratic fools r a species apart. they r ad nauseam obsequious and always burning with the desire to please their superiors, taking sensible order from above and, more often than not, distorting them beyond any recognition and/or good sense. plus, i don’t think putin had a detailed clear design of what he wanted russia to become by the end of his second term. he put it together on the go, sometimes haphazardly. if the result is a smorgasbord of conflicting ideas and ideals, it is a testament to the system’s evolving to respond to the challenges of the now. he intentionally segmented the elite thad had jumped on his bandwagon to better control them, because in the absence of any institutionalized checks and balances – that had been sacrificed for stability early in his reign – that was the only way to concentrate and maintain power. many believe that the system was built around him as the supreme ruler and arbiter, and without him it is prone to collapse. i agree, but with a caveat: authority in russia has never been personal. in other words, power emanates from office, not from any individual who happens to hold that office at the time. there r exceptions, of course. lenin and stalin were such charismatic forceful personalities that they transcended institutions. as a result, during succession, power sharing and instability ensued. it took stalin 10 years to cement his hold on power (recall the so called congress of winners and murder of kirov). khrushev had to share power for 3 years before asserting himself fully at the cpsu XX congress. today’s system in russia was built by putin, and were her to leave the political stage altogether, no one, to even an anointed successor, can step in and fill the vacuum right off the bat in his wake. it will take time, during which all the competing factions could sense the opportunity to make a grab for power, leading to instability (although coups or civil war seem highly unlikely, it’s more science fiction than political analysis). however, instability is something the new system can ill afford. its legitimacy, much like in china’s, rests on its ability to bring prosperity and maintain stability. minus the stability, its credibility with the population at large will be shot. and if there is anything the elites learnt from the traumatic experience of the late 80s and 90s, it is that legitimacy once lost can never be recovered. that’s why puin is staying on. and its speaks to the weakens of the system he beget that it requires his constant tending to strive. it’s just nobody bothered to look that far ahead in 2000. more pressing concerns were monopolizing the political agenda. i’m sure the system will be overhauled now to make sure that the next succession does not require political acrobatics from the incumbent to guarantee a smooth transfer of power. so yes, the system is clearly deficient, and putin deserves blame for it, but the system is what it is, and he needs to do what needs to be done to make it work within its present configuration. whether the west likes it, is irrelevant. putin will not sacrifice stability to placate the west even if he very much wanted to, which he does not anyway. and there’s precious little, if anything, the west can do about it. so there, my two cents on the subject.

noticed a couple of typos upon re-reading it after posting. so u’ve got to excuse me. my quick fingers always manage to get the better of me, darn them.

there’s just one typo that i can see that is nonsensical

today’s system in russia was built by putin, and were her (it should read, HE) to leave the political stage altogether, no one, to even an anointed successor, can step in and fill the vacuum right off the bat in his wake.

No cause for alarm, logorrhea is not contagious.

u seem to be safe. i hope i’ll be equally immune to ur early onset senile dementia

Actually I think astana, although he/she could benefit from capitalization and paragraph breaks, is pretty much correct all the way down the line.

.kz is Kyrgystan, isn’t it?

.kz is the on-line country domain for kazakhstan. but u were tantalizingly close

I knew it was one of those!

I have no idea whether the substance of Astana’s writings are interesting or not because I have not read his long comments.

Astana, I know we all write in a hurry when online and my own grammar and style needs much improvement, but please be more considerate to your potential readers. If you want to be read by more of us, slow down a bit, use capitalizations, paragraph breaks, and all that old fashioned stuff that makes it easier to read.