IS RUSSIA AN EVIL EMPIRE YES OR NO

Then in fifties-seventies there's a period of third-world socialism, but a lot of that isn't controlled by Soviets

yeah -- USA reacts to it as if it is, but underneath the grand ideological conflict the prime motives for these reactions seem to be, if not about corporate profit (as in latin america), about demonstrating "will" so as to preserve the MAD balance (as in vietnam) -- classic great-power motivations, if in the latter case inflamed by nukes. so even when there is a US/USSR proxy conflict that involves actual ideologically battling capitalist/communist forces within a state, there's plenty of impetus for the proxy war that has nothing to do on either imperial side w angels vs demons.

dunno that i'd put the shift right at the moment of stalin's ascension but agree that the events of his reign -- the terror and the war, one of them straight from his brain and the other merely under his management -- are what transforms the country. arguably similar tho not as dramatic or grim is the transformation the war effects on the US, which comes out the other side in the national-security-state form we know today.

I think Stalin's Socialism In One Country was a nice little pep-talk slogan for his gruelling 5 year plan and good bait to troll his party enemies to make the first move against him. But I don't think it was a watershed of ideological abandonment, the awkward temp capitalism of the NEP and lots of other shit during the civil war had already shown they were broadly a party of pragmatists or least could be bent that way when necessary.

oh if you wanna fix the point at which the party lost its Soul you can make a case for kronstadt or even for the menshevik split. (tho not saying pragmatism like NEP is a loss of soul; referring here to the party's growing tendency to antidemocratic authoritarianism.) but ussr as a reincarnated russian empire whose foreign policy is about imperial power rather than global revolution (lenin wants more of europe than he gets in the civil war, but that's toward the explicit end of supporting the german revolution he expects and requires) prob dates to stalin imo -- the reabsorption of the baltics (in collab w communism's worst enemies); the conquest of eastern europe; the kind of state that's left when that's all over.

this is my impression, w "experiment with democracy" qualified of course by the destabilizing inequity and churn following from the public-sector fire sale, "shock therapy", a sudden new class of warring gangsters, etc.; arguably democracy cannot function under these circumstances but of course the period is different from the authoritarian-monopole systems that precede and follow it and share a lot of staff.

There are points of commonality, for sure, but - as you say - the context is important. Not just the trauma and ongoing scars of shock therapy but all the other things that have happened in, to or around Russia over the last twenty-something years - the oil boom, the return of the orthodox church as a political power, the ongoing positives and negatives of a deregulated market, the opening up of Russia to the world and vice versa (both through freedom of travel and, importantly, the internet), the solidification of a liberal middle class in the major cities vs a perceived growing social conservatism elsewhere, Chechnya, issues of national identity, NATO expansion, Serbia, Iraq, etc, etc.

Some of the major players in Russian politics - like Putin and Fradkov - do have a security / military background, others like Medvedev don't. Even if the personnel hadn't changed, the country and the rest of the world definitely has. A lot of the commentary, particularly from journalists who haven't paid much attention to Russia until the recent election cycle, misses that.

It also has a bearing on what kind of Russia western politicians and commentators want to see in the future - whether the objective is isolating and containing Russia as-is, pushing for the further democratisation of the country - so Putin winning fairer elections, or a wholesale 'regime change'. The suspicion in Russia is that Clinton favours the latter. Context is important here too - the perception is that the main turning point in relations with the US (having ignored war crimes in Chechnya, etc) was the renationalisation of Yukos and the interference with international business interests which, in combination with fawning over people like Khodorkovsky, leads a lot of people - particularly on the left - to think the democratic / human rights focus is largely a sham. It's that, rather than sympathy for Putin himself, that drives most of the pushback imo.

Oh good now we can view all this through the lens of Robbie Williams and his uncompromising insistence on the meaninglessness of language

http://www.nme.com/news/robbie-williams/96877

I remember when everybody bashing on wikileaks right now loved wikileaks

that's til their Hil hack revealed "nothing," like her reassuring of Goldman Sachs

https://twitter.com/opendemocracyru/status/785966283871236096

"Presidential administration recommends officials to return their children, studying overseas, to Russia."

I remember when everybody bashing on wikileaks right now loved wikileaks

― punksishippies, 12. oktober 2016 08:37 (three hours ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

Yeah, all you hypocrites! I bet you also liked Bill Cosby before you found out he was a rapist. How dare you!!

xp, the university thing is overstated and has been going on for a while.

Russia has a goal of getting 5 universities into the global top 100 by 2020 and part of that is trying to encourage high-performing students to stay within Russia rather than looking to go to the US if they're wealthy or Finland if they can get good entry grades. The other risk is that when they go abroad, as with students from a lot of countries - particularly in tech / science, they might not come back. There's nothing much they can do to stop people but the idea that future employment in state industries might be easier if you go to MGU or MGIMO rather than LSE is one of the things they can potentially hold over them - and there's an expectation that people within government should lead by example.

The interesting thing is that high-achieving, relatively wealthy people are actively competing for prestige jobs in state industries rather than going to work for Microsoft or w/e. There's a similar trend in China and, to some extent India, of the best domestic universities being more competitive than high-profile foreign ones and an easier access point for good domestic jobs in the future.

after how many rapes did you stop liking Bill Clinton, Fred?

In all honesty I never particularly liked Bill Clinton... It was, like, an example, maaaaan.

How is the university system in Russia run (mostly)?

If you want 5 in the top 100 (in the very near term) shouldn't the focus be on faculty recruitment and retention first? I suppose student retention and career opportunities are in parallel, not competing priorities, though.

Russians probably get more higher education than anyone outside of Germany - iirc over 50% of people have degrees and there's a strong bias towards either traditional five / six year diplomas or three-year undergraduate degrees topped up with MAs. There's a huge number of universities, so quality varies, but they tend to be good and the best state institutions are of a very high international standard. When they figure in the international rankings it will usually be for hard sciences, engineering, maths and comp sci, though, rather than overall quality.

Partly due to the way in which the rankings are compiled, there's a perception that you're at a disadvantage if post-grad courses aren't taught in English (research citations contribute significantly and it's much harder to get cited if you are publishing in Russian) so there's a push to deliver more programmes in English - which, in theory, will also make courses more attractive to foreign research students.

Academics tend to be fairly badly paid in an international context - which is why there are so many Russians teaching in the US - but i think they're trying to look at retention at the top institutions at the same time. I'd be surprised if they get more than two (Lomonosov is hovering just outside already) but the target is pretty arbitrary. It's really just an excuse to get universities to internationalise and to avoid a research brain drain.

XP Some Russian universities are trying to recruit international faculty to boost their research portfolios. I almost ended up going to one, since the academic job market is so difficult!

I hope my really verbose coworker who immigrated from russia is in the office sometime soon so I can wind him up with a couple questions and hear some long-form ranting

I was kind of a dick a couple years ago because apparently he has a brother doing some russian armed services stint and kept asking "So you're suuuuure he's not in Ukraine?"

Ideal Christmas gift

Nick Butler, ex of BP, with an unusually honest statement on where a lot of the international / business community would like to go next:

https://s16.postimg.org/ipa45ldlx/Russia.jpg

Rigging the 1996 election was good. Disbursing most of Russia's state assets to organised crime in return for that assistance was good. Democracy is problematic. Let the 'businessmen' rule by fiat.

http://pbs.twimg.com/media/CvRQhPHWcAAH8aM.jpg:small

Someone was reading that at work today.

The Spectator getting in on the act as well - A+ use of vaguely Asiatic facial features:

http://cdn.spectator.co.uk/content/uploads/2016/10/cover_spec_22-oct_issues.jpg

How's The Economist triangulate on this whole thing?

I was talking to a friend who, after reading a few articles, introduced to me the idea that Russia's actions in Syria might actually be partially to encourage the emigration of refugees to Europe to destabilize support for those governments and I'm not sure what to think of that

Oh that theory has been doing the rounds for a while.

I probably had heard it but it never really sunk in.

i've heard that theory before too. seems more likely that his involvement really is about russia's military assets but that might be a little side bonus

damn, forgot to ask my russian-american coworker about this when he was in the office this week

I reject any theory that requires the Russian state to have a good understanding of second- or third-order effects, because they don't.

uh

https://s15.postimg.org/a3kpv035n/russianembassy_homophobic_gaybear.png

The Paul Robeson style US renaissance man and friend of Putin, Steven Seagal has been given Russian citizenship, the Kremlin says.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FVezEEMXsqo

Moscow Times pointed out it was just in time to get his $80 pension.

Jeff Monson, the odd MMA fighter, got citizenship recently too.

Top marks for O'Neal for the headline and overall jokes in the bit:

http://www.avclub.com/article/russia-takes-responsibility-hacks-granting-steven--245331

"Russia takes responsibility for hacks by granting Steven Seagal citizenship"

Image used for illustration purposes... Is this the most redundant sentence ever?

They started adding it to all their images when someone pointed out that one of their pictures of ISIS tanks came from Metal Gear Solid, iirc.

Damn, DIRNSA

http://theslot.jezebel.com/nsa-head-openly-accuses-russia-of-using-wikileaks-to-ge-1789051302

I can't wait to see what Greenwald has to say about this

Sad lol that this bothers absolutely 0% of the GOP

http://www.nytimes.com/2016/11/17/world/europe/russia-withdraws-from-international-criminal-court-calling-it-one-sided.html?_r=0

http://www.theweek.co.uk/europe/61498/russia-funds-french-national-front-is-moscow-sowing-european-unrest

It would be great if Russia was funding the FN as it would be a clear breach of French law and could probably get them barred from fighting the next election or bankrupted. Unfortunately it's not true - they took a loan from a Czech bank owned by a Czech-Russian businessman in 2014 and have been paying it back at standard commercial rates. They said last year that they were hoping to get a loan from another Russian bank for around €27m as they'd run out of money but this doesn't appear to have been successful. They seem to be trying to hit up banks in the UAE now.

idk why this canard has been repeated in the press for two years and nobody other than TASS and Sputnik seems to have bothered reporting that Marion Le Pen is currently in Moscow meeting with low-level Russian politicians. I'm not sure it would have been mentioned at all if she hadn't met the cuet Crimean prosecutor, Natalia Poklonskaya, inadvertent darling of anime Nazis everywhere, to confirm that the FN doesn't believe sanctions should be maintained.

It follows on from Marion claiming to have received positive overtures from Steve Bannon and Marine doing a BBC interview last week. I assume that she wasn't in the country just for that and probably met with UKIP, if not the government, in secret.

Anyway, Julia Ioffe has just done a better-than-average piece about Russia beyond the big cities for National Geographic I don't agree with all of it but it's pretty good and has some great photos.

http://www.nationalgeographic.com/magazine/2016/12/putin-generation-russia-soviet-union/

what is it about the russian weltanschauung that makes an apartment furnished with ikea furniture so vexing?

https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/economy/russian-propaganda-effort-helped-spread-fake-news-during-election-experts-say/2016/11/24/793903b6-8a40-4ca9-b712-716af66098fe_story.html?utm_campaign=digest&utm_medium=email&utm_source=app

cbb to go through this in much detail but it's worth noting that the sites the anonymous 'propaganda' monitor lists as being responsible for the spread of 'fake news' include Counterpunch, Zerohedge, Naked Capitalism, Black Agenda Report, Truthout and, rather wonderfully, The Vigilant Citizen.

Why?

Because an anonymous and accountable website and the RAND Corporation are not necessarily a reliable guide to whether left-leaning outlets are disseminating 'Russian propaganda'.

The article more or less takes on trust their definition of 'fake news', where that 'fake news' becomes 'propaganda' and where that propaganda originates. It's entirely probable that Russian troll factories were actively pushing stupid stories but whether they are any more influential than a bunch of Macedonian teenagers or domestic idiots like the guy boasting of millions of Facebook shares on pro Trump nonsense is unclear.

I don't think the point is whether or not it's more influential than Macedonian teenagers, and, really, if we're being honest the most influential fake-news-padders are still Fox News, Limbaugh, et al, and the focus on Eastern Europe are obscuring the fact that Western media is in a breakdown all of it's own making. But the meddling by Russia in this election is pretty obvious at this point, and the vulnerability of Western media to it kinda incredible. From old people by the millions taking in fake news on social media, to left wing activists spending the final months poring over hacked emails to find fodder for their personal attacks on people slightly more centrist than themselves, the whole US, and probably western, media system is broken all over.

The focus on Eastern Europe isn't just a distraction from the bigger problem, it gives an opportunity to maliciously lump everything from leftist critiques of the Democrats to Alex Jones to a guy who, bless him, genuinely seems to believe Beyonce is an illuminati high priestess as seditious and anti-American when they could barely be anything other than American.

I am sympathetic to the problem of fake news but who gets to decide what counts as fake is of critical importance when we are looking at Facebook, etc, effectively being asked to censor content.

Um, no? What's American about using stolen emails to embarrass/harass people you disagree with like Lee Fang from the Intercept did?

Facebook isn't just being asked to censor content. Many people would more like them to verify what is obviously fake, but it runs into problems because so much of right wing media is fake anyway.

Lee Fang, Russian proxy or simply a malicious foreign influence...you be the judge!

There is a paper thin line between censorship and arbitrary verification of what is 'obviously fake'. The Prop Or Not web plug in being boosted in the WP article shows how it can potentially be abused. Idk what the solution is other than better education.