Every once and I while I get emails from editors of magazines and newspapers alerting me to their articles on Russia. The intent of their communique is clear: Can you plug this? They rarely say this outright. Usually the request is masked with statements like “this might interest you” or “your readers might like . . .” Sometimes I give the story a mention if it is worthy. Most of the time I don’t. Why should I advertise the big corporate media for free? I gotta eat too.
I got one of those emails today from Slate saying that I’d “be interested” in Julia Ioffe’s “Nano-Potemkin Village” (There’s your plug, Slate.) To wet my palate further, the Slate rep added that the article’s thesis was on “the wildly ambitious Russian tech initiative, Rosnanotech, and why it’s absolutely doomed to fail.” I suddenly got the feeling that I’ve read this article before . . .
Nevertheless, I decided to check it out.
I know nothing about nanotechnology. Nor do I really care much about it beyond its appearance in X-Men comics and sci-fi movies. And I’m certainly in no position to objectively evaluate whether Russia’s attempt to modernize via nanotech is “ambitious” or is “doomed to fail.” Nor do I really give a shit. My problem is with the whole tone of the article. You see when it comes down to it, Russia is doomed to fail even before it starts. The implicit suggestion is that Russia shouldn’t try at all, or at least not try in its own Russian way. It’s a total set up for one of those damned if you do, damned if you don’t scenarios. Because if nanotech becomes the big thing in ten or twenty years and Russia isn’t lock step, it will be called backward and hopeless, followed by the usual condemnations of its failure to reform. If Russia tries to develop nanotech, like it’s doing, the effort will be castigated, as Ioffe does, as “little more than an elaborate a PR stunt designed to make the Kremlin appear to be forward-thinking and reform-oriented while shunting wads of cash to its friends.”
Sadly, you don’t just have to go to Russia to find (state-)capitalists using the public coffer as an limitless ATM. In America, this practice gets softer labels like “tax breaks” or “bailouts” and shrouded in “committee hearings” where the politician and industrialist/financier put on their own kind of “production.” The truth of the matter is, as the recent financial crisis has proven once again, that the state and capital are Siamese twins joined at the heart and the ass. The heart because of their symbiotic relationship, and the ass because their shit tends to fall in the same direction: on the heads of the public. But I digress . . .
When it comes down to it, the only thing the Kremlin is really good at doing is building “Potemkin villages.” It’s too bad it doesn’t figure out how to market those. They could name the state corporation Rospotemselo, or something like that. To explain why Russia is doomed from the get go, Ioffe turns to the wisdom of the great Russian semioticians Yuri Lotman and Boris Uspensky.
Historians Yuri Lotman and Boris Uspensky once noted that Russia does not do gradual change well. Rather, its leaders have long approached reform as a one-two break with the past, an approach that often has the reverse effect: In cleaning the slate, Russia too often simply locks in what’s already there.
You see it’s not the Russians fault that they are better at flash than substance. They are just slaves to the dialectic of their own cultural-political master. It’s reform pistols only fire “futuristic magic bullet[s]“ I’m surprised that the venerable names of other Russian clean slate reformers like Peter the Great, and well of course, comrade Stalin, didn’t make the text.
Ioffe lists other reasons why Russia’s nanotech plan won’t work even though its barely off the ground: state intervention, bureaucracy, inefficiency, graft, deficits, brain drain, and, alas too many dreamers. Maybe the latter will at least get a good izba in the “nano-Potemkin village” for their efforts.
But I didn’t have to read this article to know this plan won’t work. I read it almost everyday about every other Russian plan. The marriage of failure and Russia is a match made in discourse. Because when it comes down to it, there is really only one thesis fit to print: Russia is fucked.
“Potemkin villages” = Bad!
“Re-branding” = Good!
Excuse me while I go give up.
Sean, you make a very valid point: the trope of inevitable Russian failure is certainly problematic, and likely engaged in by people who are still fighting the Cold War.
Nice deconstruction, Sean. However, I think it’s fair to say that “the trope of inevitable Russian failure” is not just something promulgated by Western “big corporate media” – one need only remember Chernomyrdin’s “poluchilos’ kak vsegda” line.
Excellent piece.
Heh, true, and Lyndons point too. Though that doesn’t always equate it to be the absolute truth… for example, the Buran space shuttle did achieve great things but in the end, fell down.
Refer to “Potemkin” Argument.
This is a (huge) Russian forum thread discussing the hi-tech projects that are starting up there: Инновационная экономика. It would be longer, but more rewarding, to go through it to get a picture of the situation, rather than the superficial (one is almost tempted to say Potemkin) Slate article.
Seriously, Sean, you expect a thoughtful analysis without a pre-determined conclusion from a left-wing (virtual) rag?
Tsk, tsk, tsk…
@ Anatoly
The Potemkin village is a Historical myth, that has no substance to it, indeed.
People in the West used to make fun of Japanese products back in the post-war period down into the 70′s. Nobody dares to make fun of the Japanese now…
Sean:
It’s really sad, that the last journalist’s name — Ioffe — it same of a well-known Russian physicist Abram Ioffe (1880-1960). A scientific institute in St. Petersburg that does semiconductor research is named after him — Ioffe Institute.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ioffe_Institute
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Abram_Ioffe
Now this slut attempts to steal even one of the names that Russia is fairly proud of.
Maybe Slate change its name by replacing one vowel with another and removing the other, if it is not too rude.
Meanwhile, sticking to my habit on posting completely non-related news, a heads up for all you Andrei Kurkov fans out there, I’ve accidentally come across a piece by him on Ukranian fads, arguing that they don’t exist versus Peter Dickinson who argues that they do in Topic Magazine: http://www.webdelsol.com/Topic/articles/04/kurkov.html (also check the link at the bottom of the article)
Actually vaguely addressing the subject of Sean’s interesting piece, plus ca change. I do try and keep an eye out on Russia’s international hi-tech co-operation with other states and so far there are intensive talks with India on its input into future developments of the soon to fly 5th generation Pak-FA aircraft, the next gen MS-21 mainliner will fly with the revolutionary P&W ‘geared fan’ and the Soyuz delivery system will very soon be the sole means to reach the ISS, the Space Shuttle facing imminent retirement.
Add to that, there have been a slew of reports that Russian-Ukrainian techno-luv is back on (curiously in time for the next ukranian elections, Putin saying that he can do business with Tymoshenko
), Russian funding for the An-70 strategic transport plane and restarting of An-124 production (currently being used by NATO to shift their stuff to places like Afghanistan & Iraq), co-operation on GLONASS with Ukranian industry and other stuff. Two Soyuz rockets have arrived at Arianspace’s launch pad in Kourou, French Guyana. Alcantara near Brazil’s equator is also up for some russian space luv too.
Judging from Julia Ioffe’s piece, even after her ‘research’, it looks like she looks none the wiser about nano technology either. Considering the Kremilin’s obsession for secrecy (we all know that they still have effectively closed cities), then we certainly aren’t getting a full picture of any potential developments in the nano-tech field. After all, industrial espionage is being practised by everybody on everybody.
Her article appears to be the mirror image of those crazy Russians who say the US is doomed. The only thing I can say for her is that she seems to have adopted russian pessimism…
On the brain drain thing, I can only say that I met a a few months ago a stunningly good looking russian woman with a russian post doc. degree in software engineering (or something like that) who is debugging satellite software code for a certain very large european satellite manufacturer. And she’s nowhere near 50 years old…
Evgeny,
Don’t get all excited, those Ioffes are not really Russian, you see?
Um, Candide, except that Abram Ioffe was Russian; what makes you say he’s not? Because was Jewish? Are you an anti-Semite? I really think the English language needs to come up with a distinction between Русские and Россияне because people like Candide and La Russophobe really need to stop with their smug word games.
daut,
My intent was simply to poke fun at ever deluded Evgeny (because to say that one Ioffe stole a name from another Ioffe is a height of lunacy). But since you called me names I have to spank you a little.
As a Russian Empire and later a Soviet subject, Abram Ioffe had a passport. And in his Soviet passport there was a line (“графа 5″) which said “Еврей” (Hebrew). So he might have been a Russian Empire and later a Soviet subject, but he was never a Russian.
Also, Ioffe was threatened and lost his position during the late Stalin campaign against the so-called “rootless cosmopolitans” (Jews).
Finally, I think that purported distinction between “Русские and Россияне” (Russians versus Rossiyskie) exists only in the minds of foreign Russian commentariat. Inside the Russian Federation people openly name each other by ethnicity all the time.
When you want to say that a person is a subject of the Russian state regardless of that person ethnicity, just say “Russian citizen” (гражданин). So there is no need to reform the English language, you see?
Don’t get too kinky there Candide with all the spanking. But he was a Russian because Россияне also translates as Russian. Using phrases such as Ethnic Russian or Russian citizen is clumsy I think. Evgeny was obviously being sarcastic with the whole stolen name thing. I, for one, think we should start calling ethnic Russians ‘Rooskies.’ That’ll clear things right up.
Candide:
I did not say he was ethnic Russian. But his nationality was Russian. OK?
Candide:
I think your comment is entirely irrelevant to mine. Your attempts to picture me as a savage are ridiculous if not to say uncivil. Ethnicity is one of the things that I care least of when dealing with people.
Abram Ioffe was an outstanding figure for Russia, one of the top 100 or 500 key citizens of all times.
And that’s what’s important to remember.
Great job, Sean at completely missing the point of the article. I, for one, had some experience with Russian “venture capital” fortes into Palo Alto, interpreting for some of the visits into Silicon Valley. To say, “pathetic” does not say much about their aspirations and the tone of the Slate article gets the point. You can not have State mandated venture capital that results in anything serious in areas of high tech. Especially when Rusnano brags about supposedly getting 12 billion of state funding to companies that venture fund the likes of Google.
One of the groups I worked for met with a bunch of people from Sand Hill Road (if anyone knows what that means) and a few major IT companies in SV, plus a bunch or real journalists covering the Silicon Valley like FT, CNet, WSJ, etc and the question has been the same: What makes Silicon Valley work. The answer (from very different perspectives) was also the same: Tolerance of failure. To that came a standard response from the state mandated venture capitalist wannabies from Russia: Failure is not an option.
It’s not a Potemkin Village – they really think that a state can mandate ingenuity and technological progress. Good luck in that.
Evgeny,
You claim you are not a savage and talk about civility, but you had no qualms to call Julia Ioffe offensive names simply for writing an article you didn’t like?
Btw, did it occur to you that as likely as not, Julia might be a distant relative of Abram Ioffe?
Incidentally, Julia has a cool website,
http://www.juliaioffe.com/
Apparently, she is also in Moscow for a year. Perhaps Sean can meet her there.
What Cyrill said, especially:
It’s not a Potemkin Village – they really think that a state can mandate ingenuity and technological progress. Good luck in that.
No government, including the Russian government, can pick technological winners. if it wants to develop a hi-tech industry, or any industry for that matter, then remove the barriers to entry and let the market rip. Silicon Valley was not the success it became by being championed by being championed by the government. Quite the opposite, in fact.
Look to the UK. The government and its proxies has its grubby paws all over the film industry and it produces largely garbage. Conversely, the government has no involvement in the UK’s computer game industry and it is an overwhelming success (GTA4 is almost 100% British). There’s a lesson in there.
And for whatever reason those that do not want to hear this point of view automatically discard it as some anti-Russian bias, like Sean’s Russia is fucked. Nothing to do with Russia per se.