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June 12, 2015
Open Thread 2015-25
Comments
Any thoughts on the growing Russian alliance with the House of Saud?
Posted by: Wayoutwest | Jun 22 2015 13:30 utc | 101
rather just stabilizing Russia’s condition
Yes, exactly that’s the point and I’m glad we agree in that! What Putin is doing is stabilizing and preserving the 90’s status quo for ever in Russia, because this is when he and his friends became rich. But I don’t want that, neither did 200’000 people who protested against Putin, because under the current system they are physically unable to get even moderately rich without paying bribes and stealing.
If you cannot see the dirty hands of all ideologies
It’s not binary, it’s “more” vs “less”. Soviet Union was million times more oppressive and against our citizens and for 70 years.
Posted by: Arbat | Jun 22 2015 19:03 utc | 102
Arbat —
Of course, nothing lasts forever. He’s not stabilized the 90’s, as he’s gotten rid of some of the worst actors. It represents a modest improvement, more so internationally (in terms of independence from “the Washington Consensus”) than domestically, I’d say.
Should the workers and intelligentsia use it as a base to overthrow Putin, restore the collective property of the Soviet people now illegally possessed by the oligarchs, and move to re-found the Union, I’d be all for that. If the neo-liberal clique of oligarchs uses as the springboard for a comeback, I’ll be against it. Neither seem especially likely now.
Special pleading for “exceptional” countries is usually a sign to check your belongings, the pleader wants something from you. Exceptionally good, a la Americaine, or exceptionally poor, a la Russe, they both ask you to overlook the obvious.
First, catch-up commercialization and industrialization is hardly new; the English caught the Dutch, we Americans and the Germans did well as late comers to mass industrialization.
Next, this sort of investment is usually paid for by coercing the needed surplus from the masses. See, e.g., slavery, and the Irish Famine.
Finally, in terms of mass repression, it’s hard to top the Nazis; they alone built death factories. In terms of psychological impact, the Famine traumatized Ireland deeply, with the loss due to death and emigration of about 1/4 the pop. (if I recall) lamented in story and song even today.
Posted by: rufus magister | Jun 22 2015 23:46 utc | 103
restore the collective property of the Soviet people now illegally possessed by the oligarchs
I’m not sure what you mean here, but no one here (apart from a few die hard marxist lunatics) really dreams about return of the “collective property”. This concept, as it has always worked in Russia, combines extracting all kinds of personal gains from the declaratively “collective” property with total lack of responsibility for it once it’s unable to generate profit. I would say contemporary Russia suffers from lack of protection of any kind of property, as rule of law is strictly limited to those who are not in the administration or at least related. If you mean the 90’s privatization, then yes it was unfair in every possible sense, but I don’t think you can do anything about it today. Most of these are now real companies and nationalizing them today would devastate our economy.
The state should just ensure that they pay their taxes here and the taxes go to the budget. Which is not really the case with Putin – just look what happened with Gazprom. When Putin came to power, he just replaced one off-shore company (ITERA) leeching profits from Gazprom with his own (Eural Trans Gaz), so what’s the difference?
they alone built death factories
I find it quite offending you underestimating the Soviet contribution to the human civilization and this is yet another example of typical Western-centric look. In fact, we were first to build death factories just in 1918 on order from Trotsky and introduced clever innovations like killing people with vehicle exhaust gases on mass scale to save on precious ammunition. Then we cleverly combined physical extermination of undesirable social elements with forced labor, which continued from 30’s till 60’s (although last camps were really closed in late 80’s).
Posted by: Arbat | Jun 23 2015 11:34 utc | 104
they alone built death factories
I find it quite offending you underestimating the Soviet contribution to the human civilization and this is yet another example of typical Western-centric look. In fact, we were first to build death factories just in 1918 and introduced clever innovations like killing people with vehicle exhaust gases on mass scale to save on precious ammunition. Then we cleverly combined physical extermination of undesirable social elements with forced labor, which continued from 30’s till 60’s (although last camps were really closed in late 80’s).
Posted by: Arbat | Jun 23 2015 11:36 utc | 105
restore the collective property of the Soviet people now illegally possessed by the oligarchs
I’m not sure what you mean here, but no one here (apart from a few die hard marxist lunatics) really dreams about return of the “collective property”. This concept, as it has always worked in Russia, combines extracting all kinds of personal gains from the declaratively “collective” property with total lack of responsibility for it once it’s unable to generate profit. I would say contemporary Russia suffers from lack of protection of any kind of property, as rule of law is strictly limited to those who are not in the administration or at least related. If you mean the 90’s privatization, then yes it was unfair in every possible sense, but I don’t think you can do anything about it today. Most of these are now real companies and nationalizing them today would devastate our economy.
Posted by: Arbat | Jun 23 2015 11:38 utc | 106
Arbat —
As a die-hard Marxist lunatic, I believe workers should control the means of production. I was actually studying Soviet industrialization and economic organization in graduate school, was ready to do a dissertation a large weaving-spinning complex in Smolensk oblast.
The Soviets were creative enough to pose these problems in practice, and solved them well enough to industrialize the economy sufficiently to fight off the Nazis. It goes without saying that they failed to introduce workplace democracy. “We pretend to work, and they pretend to pay us” I believe the joke went following the Great Patriotic War.
They made the overnight leap in technology and social organization from feudalism to modernity. Imperial Russia’s limited achievements in the realm of politics (the curtailed zemstvo experiment in elected local government and the first few Dumas, the second two under a highly undemocratic franchise) proved more difficult to overcome.
Russia hardly invented convict or conscripted labor. Many solid American citizens today are quite keen on it, now that you mention it.
According to Wikipedia, on gas vans, officials in the Moscow oblast used one during the purges. But the Nazis used it as early as 1940, and put 20 vans and other stationary installations in operation on the Eastern Front. This is prior to developing Auschwitz; there is no Soviet equivalent.
As grueling as they were (30 pct. per annum death rate at their worst, according to the Wiki on the Gulag), mining and forestry operations in harsh Siberian climes would seem to offer more hope of survival. How many thousands did Khrushchev release during “the Thaw”?
I would remind all that while attention is most often focused on the political prisoners, the Gulag was the prison system.
Posted by: rufus magister | Jun 24 2015 1:49 utc | 107
Wayout at 102 — Sorry, I’ve been preoccupied. I’m guessing it’s an oil producer thing, a shared lust for profit and control, a torrid affair, maybe, but I don’t see a future in it.
Posted by: rufus magister | Jun 24 2015 1:54 utc | 108
@108 NKVD used mobile gas chambers as early as 1936. As far as I know 1936 happened before 1940.
Posted by: Arbat | Jun 24 2015 15:05 utc | 109
Arbat —
As always, feel free to cite your sources.
I thought a moderately clever person would realize speaking about the Purges first, for which c. 1937 always works nicely, and then moving on to discuss the modest use by the Nazis in the 40’s, before they went with Zyklon-B, was a clever way of stating the chronology, obliquely conceding the NKVD’s first use and returning to my point about actual Nazi death factories.
All the more so since citing a vague time reference did not call undue attention to the fact that 1918 seemed to be just some random date you pulled from the early Bolshevik days, and off by just a bit.
Sorry I mistook you for moderately clever, I won’t repeat that mistake.
Since I have to go back to it, Wiki indicates a date of 1936. Amongst various works, its citation of Argumenty i Fakty from 1993 is probably the most likely as the underlying source. Colton’s 1998 book on Moscow was available on line, but he looked like he could have documentation problems; the relevant section of the endnotes was suspiciously unavailable to preview.
AIF was considered reliable and acceptably critical in the Soviet era, but you know how things went to hell under Yeltsin, might be dodgy. Wiki also notes that the supposed inventor denied making it. So I feel comfortable downgrading my characterization to “alleged first NKVD use.”
Posted by: rufus magister | Jun 25 2015 4:03 utc | 110
http://1001iraqithoughts.com/2015/06/22/10-must-read-saudi-cables-on-iraq/
Posted by: Mina | Jun 25 2015 6:55 utc | 111
If I read the date correctly, this is 1432 or 1433 (hijra)
i.e. Durri’s son communicating with the Saudis when the Daesh thing is already well started…
https://1001iraqithoughts.files.wordpress.com/2015/06/saudi-douri-son.jpg
Posted by: Mina | Jun 25 2015 7:00 utc | 112
Daesh busy destroying all traces of Eastern Christians in the Middle East (Hasaka and ‘Ayn al ‘Arab were among the towns of Syria with the heaviest Christian presence)
http://ar.rt.com/gv3s
Posted by: Mina | Jun 25 2015 7:15 utc | 113
Google has re(?)designed their search engine to disallow searching a certain time period “verbatim”. So it’s impossible to search for specific, unquoted information within a specific time period. When a search has a specified time period, the “verbatim” option shows as available, but when activated, the specific time period is nulled, and vice versa. So one must sort through 10s of thousands of hits(or more) to find the time-relevant information. So, if using quotes is too restricitive for your search need, you’re shit out of luck. Want to study the chronology of a specific event without 1000s of irrellevent outdated links? Too bad. (In my case, I wanted to study the media timeline of a public person who has been recently suicided)
How long has this been the case? I noticed some time ago that Youtube got rid of their “translate” button in the comments section. It used to be a breeze to see what the Russians and Ukrainians were fighting about in the comments section of controversial post-coup videos – and extremely illustrative to say the least. Now the average westerner is sure to never happen on the candid truth.
It seems like the internet is destined for a major crackdown, or maybe this is the crackdown; a boiling frog thing-y that only us nerdy people notice at first.
Posted by: Ananymus | Jun 25 2015 13:53 utc | 114
@111 I’ve never seen so much scrutiny applied to sources on MoA as in this humble Gas vans case! You folks seem to be swallowing all these fantastic “Poroshenko ate christian!! children alive!!” stories from Fort Russ and RT in wholesale, but this single date of 1936 seems to attract almost scientific validation. I assume the next question will be “was it published in a peer reviewed journal” if the 1936 sources are validated as generally reliable. But well, if this is an ongoing trend then it definitely gives hopes for future… As for 1918, it was not a “random date” but the date of Trotsky’s decree establishing concentration camps for the perceived enemies of the revolution.
Posted by: Arbat | Jun 25 2015 15:16 utc | 116
Arbat at 111 —
You’ve thrown out one unsupported assertion after another, so I’m not surprised that you find a close look at something startling.
Detaining and even executing one’s enemies during the course of a civil war is, sadly, a fairly common phenomenon; it is not establishing Auschwitz. You may know, it was the British during the Boer War who invented the concentration camp.
Source for the decree? I would have thought this was Dzerzhinsky’s brief, as head of the Cheka, not Trotsky’s as Commissar of Foreign Affairs and later War during 1918.
No my next specific question on the alleged use of the gas van would be, what archival or other sources does Argumenty i Fakty cite? Their Soviet-era reputation hadn’t eroded much by 1993, I wouldn’t think.
The question after that being, who are our rapporteurs and how biased or disinterested is their information? And after that, can it be confirmed? A peer-reviewed journal in the field is always nice, they do tend to worry about these sort of things. I find them quite handy against conspiracy theories.
And if I might returned to your original point — we are agreed, then, that there are not masses of people killing themselves or dying in the streets due to insulin or other drug shortages in places like Tomsk or Irkutsk? (See my nr. 85 above) This seemed to be the insinuation of your original comments.
If you have specific problems with specific articles from any site I have posted from, I would be more than glad to consider them. Lame humor about “stories from Fort Russ” is a little too vague.
Posted by: rufus magister | Jun 26 2015 0:29 utc | 117