https://www.kiplingsociety.co.uk/poem/poems_jubal.htm

From the first lines, you can catch its entire vibe.

There are men of song, and men of action. Talkers vs doers. There is Jubal who sings, sings, and sings about stuff, no end. And a real doer, Tubal who is delivering, performing. With an implicit - and yet very clear - message of total Tubal’s superiority over his brother.

That is a very common, and an almost universal sentiment in our culture

Why?

Indeed, I cannot but see a certain irony in all of that

Because all of that, the entire narrative of Tubal’s superiority is nothing more than… yet another song of Jubal. (For who is Kipling himself? A Jubal, of course)

And, like all of Jubal’s songs, like everything Jubal is singing about it is… well, sort of untrue. A sentimental, romantic myth propagated by Jubals themselves, and mostly selected for its mimetic fitness rather than for it match with reality.

A myth of a real, authentic (and silent!) doer who handles stuff rather than talks about it, and - so the logic of the myth requires - necessarily triumphs in the end.

Which is very much akin to the myth of noble savage, except a savage, however noble, was not really expected to win

Once we understand that our culture developed a strong preference for a (mythological!) image of a real doer over an empty talker (developed and propagated by the talkers themselves), you can see how our cultural and historical narratives adjust to accommodate this mythological preference

For example.

How is Joseph Stalin usually represented in popular culture?

(And even in a few ‘serious’ books, to be honest)

A bank robber. A criminal. A toughguy doing dirty (and exciting!) stuff with his own hands. Who lowkey holds superiority over the empty wafflers & talkers and quite naturally triumphs over them all

Long story short, Joseph Stalin is represented as a kind of Zorro

But that is notably not how Stalin characterised himself:

Many decades later, as the leader of the Soviet Union, he had a tough talk with his chief of the airforce. Exasperated, the chief protested:

- You want too much from me. I am a mere military pilot

- And I am a mere propagandist from Baku

That sounds unusual, baffling. To our ear, not very pompous. Which is a good indication that Stalin was being sincere. I give you a tip. If something sounds weird, baffling, strange, that is usually because it is true. A piece of rough truth, not accommodated to our prejudices or sensibilities

Who I am professionally? Says Stalin. No, I am not a bank robber. I am a propagandist. A talker. Persuader. That is my job

And he is right. Although mythology ascribed huge importance to Stalin’s participation in bank robberies (because mythology loves this kind of stuff), his role seems to be remarkably peripheral. He never participated in this kind of dirty, or dangerous, job himself. Nor did he really oversaw this kind of job

(How could he, when he did never had any direct knowledge or experience)

What he did was talk to people, persuade them, and recruit them for his cause, and for his cult. That is what he was doing in Caucasus. Starting from this point - a local party propagandist - he rose higher, and higher and higher until reaching the very top of power

The rough handlers on the other hand, the men of action who did, or oversaw, or directly managed this kind of stuff never rose anywhere high in the hierarchy. They are loved by mythology, canonised, legend-ised. But the actual hierarchy was led by a propagandist who never even touched a gun.

People love Zorro image, because they are sort of braindead and cannot handle much truth about how this world really works. They want men of action to triumph in the end, which makes these kind of stories mimetically fit, and, therefore, popular. It does not make them true.

If you look at China, another Communist regime of a very different history, you can notice a roughly similar pattern.

Who was Mao Zedong himself?

We have all heard power comes from the barrel of the gun quote. Why have we all heard it? Because it is mimetically fit. Tough, rough, and direct, people love that kind of stuff.

But is it really true?

When the Kuomintang and Kungchantang, made an alliance, to march north and unify China, and have themselves largely merged into a one political structure, Mao Zedong headed a propagandist department of the KMT. His job was not to lead, or command, or shoot. His job was to persuade.

Who was Deng Xiaoping? He was, again, a propagandist, now in the army of Mao Zedong

Neither of them was really a general, or a career military. Both have been talkers, who have super-imposed themselves upon the military structure1.

Later, much later, when Mao’s troops were going on their Long March, crossing the rough mountains of Tibetan Plateau, they suffered terribly, and they dropped all of their artillery behind.

They knew they could re-constitute their polity in a new area without mortars, or howitzers. That is useful, but not vital. But they could not reconstitute it without a printing press.

There is something deeply limited, deeply blind about the Mancur Olson’s argument of the nomadic & stationary bandit. He is right of course, that there is a clear gangster-ish element in the nature of state, and that deep inside every state works as a gang

But on a deeper, much deeper level, every state is a cult

Why, regardless, of what chud intellectuals may be telling you, you probably should go to college.

First. There’s this common idea that the elite education is going to become ‘irrelevant’, ‘because of AI’

I am expecting the opposite

What is happening already, and will be likely happening in the future is a certain devaluation of the laptop productivity, as everything you can do on your laptop, the AI can do cheaper and faster.

(and even if it can’t, then it still presents enough competitive pressure, to lower the value of whatever you are doing)

Which means, that a productive chud will not be a net winner of the total AI transition

Second. The point of the elite education is less about education than about building connections with other people

That part, of hanging around and mingling, is likely to become more valuable, than less valuable in the foreseeable future

Why is that. That is because this kind of stuff will be becoming more rare

You see, the advent of computers and online entertainment, it has already substituted much of the human connection with the ersatz of the human connection

First, people used to chatter on a village square

Then, people started to chatter in the social media

Now, they are increasingly stopping to chatter with other people at all, interacting - almost exclusively - with some kind of an AI agent.

(The thing with AI, is that it fills the void of loneliness. In that regard, you should expect its effect on the modern society to be comparable with the effect of firewater on the natives of North America or Siberia)

So, what you will be increasingly seeing around is the world of loners talking to AI, and losing any sort of touch with other humans. That is already very visible, I see it, and a lot.

In practical terms, it means that personal human connections and networks of human connections will become more valuable than ever, exactly because they will be so rare in the increasingly isolated & lonelyworld, with everyone else talking to some kind of devil behind the screen.

Now college - believe me or not - is actually a very good place to build lasting & lifelong connections with other humans, and you probably should use this opportunity, if it is presented to you. Because this opportunity is priceless and especially priceless in the young age.

As a place where young people are hanging out, and mingling with other young people, and building their solidarity, and lasting connections, college is not going anywhere. Individual brands, of particular universities can be going up and down, of course. But the whole concept is going to last, in one form, or in another.

***

There is another idea, which, as a young person, you should probably reject

That is, that you should have a carefully laid ‘plan’ for everything you are doing

I don’t really thing you should

In fact, I think that planning is overrated. Because there’s something slavish in the whole idea. You lay an explicit, verbalise-able plan, than can be communicated to, and understood by other people. Then, you follow it, step by step. On each step, you path is transparent, and legible for others, they understand what you are doing & approve it.

There’s something of a managerial panoptikon in all of it

As a young person, you should be doing less planning, and more of putting yourself into a position (and a location!), where the lucky accidents will be happening to you. Many and many of them. Don’t plan. Move yourself to where probability of fortunate accidents happening is higher.

You cannot predict these things, you cannot plan them. What you can realistically do is to estimate the density of probabilities, here and there. And, more importantly, the asymmetry between these densities.

If you remain in your home town, no kind of lucky, fortunate accident can possibly happen to you. The density of positive chances is slim, and will be getting slimmer & slimmer as you age.

Moving somewhere, all sorts of things can happen. And a school, if chosen correctly, can vastly increase the chance of these lucky accidents. Double, triple, quadruple, and more than that, if you are young.

In fact, it can vastly increase the chance of these accidents, even if chosen incorrectly. Going to a sub-optimal school which is not exactly right for you, is still vastly better than staying in your home town, or worse, suburbia, where nothing happens at all.

Read more

1. We are used to think Napoleon was born on Corsica. But he was really born in Ajaccio. A tiny Italian seaport on the wild Corsican coast, connected with Italy with very deep ties, educational, cultural, familial. Originally, of course, he was a child of a peripheral Italian culture.

(Decades later, writing to his mother about a fancy aristocratic dinner he had attended in France, he told her he would much rather be eating lasagna and ravioli back home)

His family traced its descent to the settlers from Liguria, and Lombardy. His town, lived under the suzerainty of Genoa. His father got his law degree in the university of Pisa.

Small island, with the deep, very deep ties to the Northwestern Italy, and historically dominated by the latter. Coastal towns having much better connections with the mainland, than with the rugged mountains in the island’s interior

He was an Italian boy, raised in a remote Italian town, speaking a rude Italian dialect1. Which he later forgot. After the many years in France, returning to Ajaccio, he found out he can barely speak his native tongue.

That is, despite him never mastering the French to the level of native fluency

There are now many immigrants in Europe, who cannot speak any language in the world properly, because they forgot their old speech and never mastered the new one. Think of a Dutch Moroccan, who can not really speak neither Moroccan2, nor Dutch.

Napoleon was exactly like that

***

2. Napoleon grew in a small & parochial world clinging to the Italian cultural sphere. But the French conquest forcefully brought it towards the largest & most powerful kingdom of Europe. To some of the Corsican elites, it opened new opportunities that never existed before.

To understand the political balance of the 18th c Europe, you must first and foremost understand that France was absolutely en-ormous. The largest country of Europe & the largest by far3. A European China

A perfect social climber, Bonaparte’s father Carlo fully exploited these opportunities. His wife, beautiful Letizia, pretty much certainly was the mistress of Marbeuf, the French governor of Corsica. Marbeuf protected, supported them, advanced their family into the nobility & ultimately helped to place their children into the prestigious schools in France, all fully funded4.

3. Napoleon went to a military school, in northeastern France. Like all educational institutions of pre-revolutionary France, it was run by the monks. You could have thought, that a school like that would be mostly focused on the applied, military related disciples.

And, you would be wrong. The course was centred around studying Greco-Roman classics, most importantly Plutarch, the Lives of the Great.

It was expected that reading on Epaminondas, Scipio and Cato the Elder would instill students with all the correct values and with the noble jealousy, to emulate their accomplishments.

(Here, by the way, I see a major divergence with the modern era. In modern day, we are all mortally terrified of being accused of ‘larping’. Not being fully original, and consciously copying someone or something that has happened before, is seen as the greatest crime ever. Earlier cultures, however, were free from this specific taboo, and copying the great was seen as the path to greatness. Or, at the very least, to the noble and meaningful life )

3. In his school, Napoleon, of course, occupied a marginal position. He was poor. He was small. He was not a Frenchman. His weird name ‘Napoleone’ invited mockery, because its ending sounded like ‘nez’, the French word for ‘nose’.

He never learnt how to speak French properly, and, apparently, never took any great interest in that. His teacher of French in the Royal Military School just kicked him out of the lesson, saying there’s no need for him to come, if he was so un-motivated.

His French always remained odd, with funny mistakes and grammatical inconsistencies. Later, it would have become a problem. Unless, of course, for the revolution. Revolution massacred, but mostly exiled the previous establishment: noble & properly educated. Their places were taken by the parvenue from below the social ladder, a great many of whom also did not know how to speak French correctly.

You should not forget that what we call French is merely a Parisian dialect. By the moment of Revolution, it was the language of state, of the elite, of the education. But the vast majority of population spoke it poorly, or not at all. They conversed in their regional patois, many of which were very far from the official literary Parisian standard. In these circumstances, the odd, faulty style of Napoleon was less of a drawback than it could be, otherwise.

As late as in 1835, only the minority of French departments were regarded as wholly French speaking. The great majority of the country mostly conversed in the patois. We may not have as reliable data for 1789, but we must imagine that back then the number of proper French speakers must have been even smaller, and mostly limited to the educated elites

It, in fact, may have served as a great mimicry, protecting him from the jealousy of his social & political superiors. They, people of proper upbringing & education, saw his irregularities, and noticed them. What they did not see, is that the vast mass of the parvenue advanced into the middle or even higher ranks of the hierarchy by the Revolution, does not give very much importance to any of that. Because it never been accultured enough, into the high French culture.

Hence, huge underestimation of this ethnic minority guy. Largely based upon the narrow cultural prejudices of the narrow pre-revolutionary educated elites. They might have seen him as non-serious, while he in fact was very serious. That reminds me of a similar mistake that the Bolshevik oligarchs committed with Joseph Stalin

Who also never learnt how to speak Russian properly

4. Now, the last thing. What we should not be forgetting when we speak of Napoleon Bonaparte, is the broader cultural context of the era. And the era it was, of romantic nationalism. All over Europe, people were discovering ancient manuscripts, epics, histories. All over Europe, they were forging the glorious past, of their own peoples.

All over Europe, they were coining the new national identities, and the nations themselves

Songs of Ossian, were the most favourite book of Napoleon Bonaparte. If you never heard about them, that is because they have been memoryholed & erased from history. Napoleon read them for his entire life, always kept a book near his bed, and even took it into battle. He loved reading and declaiming it publicly, and forced his generals to listen.

But - the thing I did not know - and learnt only recently, is that he did not read Ossian in French (as I previously presumed). He first read him in Italian, and only later - in French

One of these national resurgence (or rather, nation-creation) projects, was Corsican. And Napoleon, since his younger days, was an avid patriot of this project.

Historically, Italian city states on the Corsican shore, did not rate the inhabitants of the inlands very highly. They saw them as savage barbarians, far below the civilised settlers on the coast, unworthy of the civil rights, or of the town citizenship. They felt much more affinity to (and awe before) the proper Italian mainland: Liguria, Tuscany.

The mountaineers of the inland were seen as lowly natives, much like American Indians, and the inlands themselves were usually addressed as ‘Our Indies’. The savage periphery, even if this periphery is located a few steps from our own doors, two hundred meters above.

The parallel with Scotland may be helpful. Historically, the lowland Scots of Edinburgh, or Aberdeen, did not see much affinity with highlanders either. Dirty savages, with their uncouth Gaelic, they were not seen as Scottish at all, but rather as the ‘Irish’ barbarians. So, from the lowland Scottish perspective, mountains of their own land, were populated by an evil, savage tribe, infinitely below the civilised Scots.

Their identity was not based upon the feeling of any affinity, or communion with the mountaineers, but rather upon the strict & firm opposition to that scary, barbarian and clearly alien world, that we, townsmen, have absolutely nothing in common with.

But in the Age of Enlightenment, and the age of romantic nationalism, it all started to change, in Scotland - and in Corsica

***

Postscriptum. I do not only want to write texts, I also want to make movies out of them. Here an example (in Russian), which gives a general understanding of what I am talking about. I tried it out 5 years ago, but abandoned because it was too expensive to do. Now, I want to return to this idea. If you are willing to help, or contribute, you can write me here or kamilkazani@gmail.com

How to donate:

ETH 0xA9FA4454cC3EC0Ff521926BB5F8D4389bA0e665a

BTC bc1qgsgycr9pew4sygtky8wk2vcm9wljpytazs2wae

Direct card payment: https://buy.stripe.com/7sY4gA3ST17A6QeaRM0Ny01

PayPal galeev.info@gmail.com

Mao Zedong, in his statements, talked about peasantry being the main force of Chinese revolution. Peasantry, and not the urban proletariat was the main character - in a stark contrast both to classic Marxism, and to the mainstream Marxism-Leninism of the era.

Why? What was even his point?

Surface reading: he was waging an abstract theoretical discussion, academic style, and made an abstract statement of abstract truth.

Actual reading: no, it was not some kind of theorising into the void. It was a tactical move, a verbal attack & a counter-attack that makes sense only in the context of the intraparty power struggle of the 1920s - early 1930s.

Mao was an early member of the Kungchantang, but he was a lowly, rather inconspicuous member. From its very beginnings, the party had tons of people who were of much higher status, better educated, and originally came from the much higher social standing than a rural bumpkin Mao.

Mao was a son of a kulak, rich by the standards of his poor & backward village. His (relative) privilege made him tower above the true masses of unwashed peasantry. Unlike them, he finished a school, he could read and write, and he did, indeed, read extensively. From the perspective of the children of the soil, he was highly sophisticated, a man of culture.

But he was infinitely below those, who, in that day and age, comprised the backbone of the Chinese communist party. For these sons of the urban rich and of mandarins, a kulak’s son was something akin to a redneck, or a hillbilly. Barely educated. Weird provincial accent. No social polish, no manners, funny personal habits. Never read theory, and he of course could never hope to read theory in original, as many and many of them did. For the early leaders of the CCP, he was an unwashed peasant.

The very idea of such a man laying a claim on the leadership, would be absurd, ridiculous, to the original bosses of Kungchantang. Absolutely beyond the limits of acceptable. To them, he was barely above a rural bandit, fighting for the Reds - who can serve the Reds, but can never participate in governance, and can be disposed off at will, whenever necessary. A cheap, disposable material, or barely above that.

So, when the tides started changing, and Mao’s profile did start rising - for the first time - that of course triggered a violent reaction from the better educated, more urbane (and more Marxist) leaders of the Party. And that, among other things, included a verbal attack against Mao. As the head of the Party, Bo Gu put it:

Shut up, you, stupid hillbilly. Go back to the Appalachians. It is up to the urban proletariat to execute the revolution, and it is for the urban intelligentsia to lead it. Leadership is for the highly credentialed, urbane, sophisticated, and, of course, well read in theory. Unwashed rednecks from the mountains have nothing to do with it all.

Once again. When Bo Gu is saying, Communism cannot come from the hills, he is not doing some kind of abstract rant about theory. He, in fact, is not theorising at all, it is very important to understand it. He is waging a very precise, well-targeted personal attack against Mao Zedong, denying him his share in the leadership of the party.

Now to answer that, to deflect the attack and make his own counterblow, Mao puts forward his own statement. The peasantry, he says, is the main force of Chinese revolution, specifically, and not the urban proletariat.

Again, it’s not some abstract, autistic reasoning. It is a combative statement, made in combat for power against his more established opponents. Its real message, real intent is to legitimise the role of Mao Zedong as a major party boss, despite his lack of the (presumably) necessary education, polish and theoretical credentials.

Mao Zedong rallying the hill tribes of Zomia for the Red cause. Oil painting

In China, Communism absolutely does come from the hills, and I, a hillman, will lead the hillsmen for the Red cause. All of that, however, may be difficult for our contemporaries to see, because the original context of the statement (struggle for power in the Communist party) is now long bygone, and semi forgotten. So, his purely tactical, instrumental statements, are now seen as the statements of some deep theoretical truth.

Which they are not

I was recently asked:

Hey, Kamil, does anyone in Tatarstan’s government listening to you?

I think it is a very good question. And not only regarding me, personally, but like, generally speaking. A good question to start a discussion on what a public intellectual can, and cannot do. On the limits of their capabilities

Because the answer is of course not

Obviously, not, but it is still worth explaining why the answer is necessarily negative.

When you are imagining a government, you must understand that it is led by the people who are quite old. Most of its leading figures are in their 60s, or 70s, or sometimes even older. Which means: their personalities have been fully formed, and formed like decades ago. By this point, they became very & very rigid, and are not going to update their worldview. That is simply not going to happen

That is one reason. Another reason would be: people in government, are very, very busy. Once you are in power, 99% of your effort and attention will be focused on keeping the power, and guarding it from all sorts of greedy competitors. People who are in power for long, are usually very smart about it, and develop ingenuous, 5D chess schemes to secure their position. But that also means that their vision is very tunnel-like, fully focused on securing what they already have.

For a U.S. congressman that may mean, winning the next elections in their Oklahoma or Minnesota, at whatever cost necessary. Winning the reelection, that is what they are solely concerned about. For a politician in Russia, succeeding in the extremely byzantine court intrigues. That is all they care about and nothing else matters

So, when you put it this way: are you being listened to by the very old people fully focused on maintaining their current position and status, the answer is obviously no.

So who does listen to me then?

Well, it’s a very good question.

In general my impression is, that people who listen to me, tend to be much, much younger & not currently on any positions of power (of if they are, then on the very junior positions, somewhere at the foot of the ladder).

Now there is nothing peculiar, or unusual about my case. In fact, it is very typical.

The core, target audience of a public intellectual, are the people who are relatively young, and not very busy. And not very busy means: not in power. Or at least, not on the very top of it. Because people on the very top of hierarchy seldom consume much intellectual content at all.

Now that shows the great mistake of intellectuals, mistake they are committing since the days of Plato. Intellectuals think: I want to exert influence, I want to affect the affairs of the world. Now what I need to do is to find some person who already has power, some king, or tyrant, or whatever, and advise him. Tell him what to do. That’s how I will exert my influence, without holding reins of power, personally.

They are wrong. This scheme that sounds so good in theory, does not work in practice

That is because - even in theory - it does not sound good. Just think about it. There is something treacherous, something fundamentally dishonest in the whole scheme. You want a resource (power), but you do not want to earn, or maintain it. All you want is to find another person who already has what you want, and use his resource, instead of earning your own.

It is like instead of learning how to drive & acquiring a car, you would find some friend with a car, and then try to use him as your personal taxi, 24/7. He may oblige, once or twice, if he really likes you, but in the end he will tell you to fuck off.

And that is exactly how every ‘philosopher’ who tries to use a king as his personal cab driver ends up. At the very best, the king will send him away.

So, basically, the thing with finding a king and telling him what to do, is that this idea is:

a) extremely extremely extremely sexy in the eyes of all intellectuals, worldwide

b) does not work in reality

That is how Alexander Dugin became so popular internationally. All he does is selling porn to Western shitlibs. Tell them, you are a mysterious philosopher advising a powerful king, and they will believe you immediately. Why? Because they are salivating at this idea. Dugin is selling them porn, but to produce a bestseller porn, you need to correctly identify their desires. Dugin is smart enough to do just that

That however, raises a question. If the scheme with finding a king, making him your obedient puppet, and telling him what to do is so obviously dumb, and self contradictory, than how come all the intellectuals are falling for it? And have been falling it, for centuries and millenia? And not just regular chaps, but people like Plato?

I think I know the answer. This (absurd, non-working) scheme is so popular because it is offering immediate results.

Because, what would be the alternative? Plant your seeds patiently, laboriously, over the years and decades, to may be never even see the final fruit of your work? That sounds painfully realistic, and that is, indeed, how it usually works in reality.

Diderot, Voltaire, Rousseau, and other top podcasters and twitch streamers of the 18th c, they surely made a massive impact on the great revolution that would enflame France in the end of the century. That is all the fault of Voltaire, that is all the fault of Rousseau, these usual royalist complaints may sound as a wild exaggeration, but they are actually not.

Political turmoils of the late 18th c France were not caused by the twitch streamers, of course, they were initiated by the dukes, and princes of blood. But - unless for the streamers, and for the accumulated effect of their streams, accumulated over the course of many decades - these aristocratic shenanigans would produce a more aristocratic form of government, at best. The apocalyptic crisis, that was to destroy them all, was neither envisioned, nor desired by the aristocracy. And the idea to destroy every single societal institution, and to reestablish it all anew, based on a single rational principle, was certainly not conceived by the aristocracy either. It was conceived by streamers, on Twitch, and from there - it materialised into reality.

Except, except the streamers never saw any of it. Voltaire, and Rousseau died in 1778. Diderot died in 1784.

And the revolutionary events, that can be dated back to as early as to 1787, did not assume their truly apocalyptic character till the year 1789.

Which means, that neither of the top-rated podcasters of the enlightenment ever saw a final fruit of their work.

***

Now that explains how and why do intellectuals get enamoured with such an obviously stupid idea like becoming a secret adviser for a powerful king. Because, you see, when people stick with something obviously stupid, that is seldom because the people themselves are stupid. In fact, many of them are not. That is usually because the idea sounds so sexy, so attractive, that it turns off their critical sense.

And the attractiveness of this idea, is that it seems to be offering quick results, within your own lifetime. Whereas, the objective reality seldom offers anything like that.

That, however, does not mean that intellectuals are powerless. In fact, their cumulative influence can be enormous, mind blowing. But - and this is an important point - it can be exercised only in the very long run. Long, very long run. Over the long run, the effect of their work can be absolutely terraforming.

But in the long run, we are all dead

Imagine, you are a Soviet citizen in the 1930s, and you are being mistreated by your superiors. May be your boss hates you, and disciplines you for no reason. May be you are being persecuted by the local authorities. You tried to negotiate with them, or placate them, but to no avail. They are implacable. What are you gonna do?

Is there anything you could do about it, at all?

Strangely it may sound, but yes, there is a last resort option that might actually work. You need to write someone on the very top of Soviet government, on the top of the hierarchy, and beg him to intervene. Because is he actually does intervene, then yes, indeed, it may change the situation in your favour.

That is understandable. But whom you should write exactly? To Joseph Stalin himself? No, better not. A letter to Stalin may change the situation for the better, yes, but it is as likely to change it for the worse. You need to present special reasons to convince Stalin to intervene in your favour, and, as you likely do not have such reasons, you better not write him at all.

You need to write to Mikhail Kalinin. That is the primary figure in the Soviet government accepting complaints and begs for help, and who - surprisingly often - helps those who are begging for it. A sort of kind deity of the Soviet pantheon that is actually answering to people’s prayers and may even answer to yours.

What was Mikhail Kalinin’s position, exactly? Oh, that is very interesting question. To start with, he was the head of state. As the Chairman of the Supreme Soviet, his formal position made him the head of Soviet Union. Legally, and on paper, it was Kalinin who was the supreme boss.

(Stalin, for all his powers, never was the formal head of state)

Second. Through Stalin’s era, Kalinin’s position was absolutely unique, unprecedented. What made Kalinin such a rarity among all the Soviet bosses, is that of them all, he was the only person personally picked by Lenin. Everyone else, no exception, was picked by Stalin, and was Stalin’s appointee. Kalinin was only and only exception from the rule.

Let me explain this a bit. How did succession, and the cadre replacement work, in the Soviet Union. First, there is Lenin. He is the supreme boss. He personally picks the leadership, and picks a bunch of people - including Stalin - and promotes them to the highest positions in government. Then Stalin one by one destroys and kills all of them, replacing Lenin’s picks with his own, Stalin’s shills and vassals.

So, Stalin had been Lenin’s vassal himself, and that is how he got into government into the first place. But, having concentrated the supreme power, he won’t tolerate a single Lenin’s vassal around him anymore. No. Everyone, everyone with as much as a bit of power must be a personal Stalin’s pick, personal Stalin’s vassal, who will owe his position to Stalin, and to him only.

It is the vassals of the new boss, that will occupy all the positions of power in the country. The vassals of the old boss, on the other hand, will be purged and then killed, one by one. The fact that the new boss used to be the vassal of the old boss, as well, does not contradict this picture at all. He will hound and destroy every single of his former friends and colleagues. That is exactly because they were his colleagues once, and, therefore, it is too difficult for them to look up to him, to perceive him as god.

They will be too inclined to talk with him on equal terms, from the position of parity. You were appointed by Lenin, I was appointed by Lenin, there is no reason I should be bowing to you and kissing your boot. That kind of independence will not be tolerated. That is why everyone who had been appointed by Lenin will be purged by Stalin who himself had been once appointed by Lenin, as well.

You can see how this rule works, on example of Putin & Khodorkovsky. They both were the vassals and picks of Yeltsin. Obviously, Khodorkovsky is not an entrepreneur and never had been. He is a personal vassal of the Tsar, who was given a fair share of property, as a personal feud. Now the problem is. With Yeltsin, he well understood that Yeltsin is the Tsar and he, Khodorkovsky is a slave, whose place is under the boot. He knew that, with Yeltsin.

But when the new boss came, he started forgetting that. He falsely assumed that the change of leadership means personal liberation, for him. To Yeltsin, he owed everything, to Putin he owed nothing. Putin was just another serf of Yeltsin, like him. With the new boss, he started talking on equal terms, from the position of parity. That was, of course, not tolerated.

By this point, I have given a sufficient explanation for why the old boss’ vassals, so often appear to be problematic from the new boss’ perspective. And why the new boss feels the need to purge the vassals of the old, despite himself being his vassal, once. There is a strong rationale, behind getting rid of them all, and, being perfectly bad, Stalin brought it to its logical end.

Except - strangely enough - with Kalinin.

In the entire Stalin’s Politburo, he and Stalin were too only people, picked and promoted by Lenin. Of all the Soviet big bosses, he was the only one who did not owe everything and more to Stalin. Strangely enough, Stalin did not kill him, and even kept him in the government, till the very end.

Third. There was something in common between Stalin & Kalinin. I mean, the reason they had been elevated into the leadership in the first place. They were both DEI picks. Stalin was picked because he was Georgian, and Georgia had very few Bolsheviks back then. Kalinin was picked because he was Russian.

That’s how Lenin explained his promotion. We are the party of workers and peasants, aren’t we? And that guy, perfectly symbolises the union between the two. He is Russian, actual Russian peasant from Tver (!), we must absolutely promote him into the government. So, yes, whatever their personal or business qualities could be, the initial reason for their advancement, was pure identity politics.

Through Stalin’s years, position of Kalinin in the Soviet government was quite peculiar. Remember, he was only other Lenin’s pick, surrounded by Stalin’s vassals from all the sides. And his position was different, different from them all.

You know in which respect he was different from all the other Soviet big bosses? He never signed any shooting lists.

During the Great Purge, Politburo members were personally signing the lists of people to be executed. Most of all, were signed by Molotov, then Stalin, then everyone else. Some signed more of them, some signed fewer, but everyone had to participate in purges, and everyone’s hands were in blood.

Except Kalinin. He had been the only person in government to never have signed any, and who, seemingly, was (purposefully?) kept very far away from the repressions and all the repressive apparatus.

Again, he was a kind deity, responsible for mercy, and not for the punishment

Last. A bit of context, that may not fully explain the peculiar status of Kalinin in Soviet government, but make his miraculous survival through all Stalin’s purges more understandable. Explain why Stalin chose to spare this particular vassal of Lenin, and him alone. Spare him, although he did not owe everything to Stalin, and could, therefore, turn out to be uncontrollable.

Or could he?

Kalinin, of course, was an old Bolshevik, who participated in the pre-revolutionary struggle. And, as many of the old Bolsheviks he had been repeatedly arrested & interrogated. Spent some time in prisons, some time 1-2-1 with Tsar’s investigators. Now it looks like during at least one of these interrogations he talked, and disclosed some information he was not supposed to, not according to the party rules.

It looks like in the 1920s, the protocols of his interrogations - confirming the fact that he talked to the Tsar’s police - got into Stalin’s hands. And, once that happened, that made Kalinin fully controllable. Were Stalin to release them, that would result in an immediate destruction of Kalinin, in every respect. He would not be executed back then, but his status, his reputation, and his position in the elites would vanish in no time. He would immediately turn into pariah, hated and despised by everyone.

And that - remember that all of that was happening in the period of vicious intra-party struggle for power - made Kalinin absolutely controllable by Stalin.

Whatever he thought, however he felt, he had to obey Stalin, and to side with him against everyone, because Kalinin was compromised, and - having the kompromat - Stalin firmly held him by the balls. Now, paradoxically enough, it is being compromised that may explain the survival of Kalinin, the only one of Lenin’s appointees. He knew he was guilty, he was terrified of punishment, and all of that made him absolutely obedient to the one who held a file with the kompromat.

There was just no point, in killing him

But there was a strong rationale, to keep him as the head of state, because the knowledge of own guilt made him perfectly controllable

And that brings us to our last point. Accountability. You know, every time, people start talking about the value of accountability, I think.

Accountability to whom exactly, you, brainless animal?

The feeling of guilt, the knowledge of guilt, the terror of shame & punishment, all of that serves as the best possible foundation of evil power, making people perfectly controllable by the one who can spare them, or throw them to the wolves, all by disclosing their hidden sins.

Recently, there has been a wave of Democratic Socialist candidates displacing their usually much older establishment predecessors. The results of Colorado primaries, I found quite symbolic. A sitting congresswoman DeGette got primaried by a 40 (fucking forty!) year younger Kiros.

(What I found especially crazy is that Kiros was literally born in a year that DeGette first assumed office)

And, that may be a good point for starting a conversation on the nature of political power. Or, more practically, on how to win it, pragmatically speaking.

Because some of the DSA candidates who won, indeed, tend to be extremely extremely strong. Like, extraordinarily strong, by any standard. But I can’t say that about everyone. Some of them are just alright, and that’s it. Nothing extraordinary.

So, it’s not about every single candidate being super strong individual player. It is about something else. These guys have won (a good deal of) political power, and won it at early age without necessarily being extraordinarily politicians themselves.

How?

First, I will give you a bit of theory, then, a bit of practical advice

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There’s a huge scandal going on in Ukraine, right now

Specific details and nature of the scandal do not concern us very much. What I find interesting, is how it highlights the super-robust, ironclad position of the Ukrainian Commander-in-Chief, Alexander Syrsky. Time after time, he triumphs over every other opponent and every competitor, relying on the ironclad support of President Zelensky. Again and again, the president chooses him over everyone else.

Why?

Well, I don’t have any secret inside info from the Ukrainian government. But based on my general understanding of how things work under the moon, I think I can make an educated guess.

There are several great things about Syrsky that, in combination, secure his position making him a preferable choice over every other competitor. One element of that combination is the fact that Syrsky is Russian. Born in Russia, raised in Russia, has a family (parents and brother) still living in Russia1.

This may stumble you for a moment. Like, stop, full stop. Ukraine is fighting war against Russia. Russia is the enemy, Russia is the outgroup. The official discourse, the popular discourse is all vehemently anti-Russian. Every bit of association, of link with Russia is being rejected, destroyed.

Should not being Russian be, I don’t know… a bad thing? A disadvantage, or a liability?

(I mean in the context of the contemporary Ukrainian politics)

Well. Depending on how you look at it

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So, for this time, I will limit myself to Cambridge only

(Next time, I will do London)

Number one, without any doubt goes to G. David bookseller

Location makes it very convenient to visit. If you are in London, that is like an hour long train from King's Cross. Sometimes, I go to Cambridge, exclusively to check it out, no other purpose

Why it's so great. So far, it's the best bookshop of the antiquarian literature I have found in the UK. Like, very old books, from the 19th, 18th and sometimes even 17th and 16th centuries. And the constant supply of them, there's always some new stuff every time I come

What is also interesting, is the prices. In London bookshops, all of the antiquarian literature costs trillions bazillions gazillions. Everything, very very expensive.

In Cambridge, it depends. There are some very pricey items in the shop, it's true. But at the same time, you can be getting insanely, unbelievably goods deals that you couldn't get anywhere else

Imagine the full, 18th century lifetime edition of Edward Gibbon's Decline and Fall, for just 85 pounds! I checked the pages, and they seem to be in great condition: no mold, or anything, nice print, large letters, pleasure to read.

(For me, it's very important that the letters are large, and the print is readable)

That is absolutely insane. I never ever saw such great deals, literally anywhere else

PS Sadly, I have already bought an 1813 Gibbon (in the same shop), and there is only that many full Gibbon editions that I can fit into my flat, so I had to skip this one. But otherwise, I would have certainly bought it

***

Now if you are already in Cambridge, it may be worth checking out a couple of other bookshops, as you are already here

Go to Heffers, and descend to their underground floor, to the used books section. They don't have any antiquarian, like very old stuff that G. David has. But their choice and variety of 20th c academic literature is excellent. Some very good items, at affordable prices. I remember, how I bought there for 10 pounds some book I was planning to order online for over a hundred.

The underground floor worth visiting

***

Cambridge University Press bookshop. I put it last, because it is so central, and well known, that it would be hard for you to miss it anyway.

It has an amazing collection of modern academic literature

To be completely honest with you, browsing old books gives me more joy than the new ones. But, it does not mean that I somehow dismiss, modern scholarship. Not at all. There's lots of interesting stuff going nowadays, and it's always good to keep your finger on the pulse

Here is one of my recent acquisitions from the Cambridge university press bookshop. A Maritime Vietnam, by Li Tana.

What do I know about the maritime Vietnam?

Absolutely nothing at all. I may be vaguely aware of the existence of Champa, and that's it, basically. Other than that, my knowledge of the maritime history of what is now Vietnam and its seaward connections is a complete and total zero

And that is a pity, because I like the sea. I like the ocean. Ships, seaports, maritime routes, all of that sounds super cool to me, always worth checking out. And so, I bought the book

And I have no regrets, because it is amazing

By this point, I must have elaborated my point enough, to convey the idea of why you must be browsing the bookshops in the first place. It is not only to scavenge some cool stuff, although the hunting instinct certainly plays some role here. Not only to get the aesthetic pleasure, although the role of the aesthetic impressions here is huge.

You must be visiting bookshops first and foremost, to see the scale of your own ignorance. How much cool stuff is out there, interesting stuff that you know absolutely nothing about.

(It goes without saying that you must choose cool bookshop, with cool stuff, for that)

In this regard, it works very much akin to library, except most libraries do not allow you to browse through their entire collections, wander around the shelves, and just take and try whatever you want. Most libraries would want you to know exactly what you need, and order it through some kind of centralised catalogue.

And that sucks, man, that sucks. It makes it all way too purposeful, too self-conscious, too utilitarian. It kills most of the explorative, most of the meditative element in the whole experience. I would go further than that, it kills most of the research element in the experience, here. Because most of the sudden, most of the weird, most of the unobvious discoveries that happen when you just wander around the shelves at random, they… well, they don't happen when you have to plan everything beforehand.

One problem with modern culture, is that the modern man wants to overplan everything. But the creative processes, research processes, all the real life processes, they cannot be planned over a certain degree, and must necessarily include an element (and a huge one!) of healthy randomness, and random exploration.

One of the most interesting and important books, I have read for the past year, I found in a hotel lobby. It was just standing there, as a part of mostly decorative bookshelves. So, I just borrowed it, and took it home with me.

Meant to deal with the problem of French character, it is the single best account of the Anglo character, and Anglo culture that I am aware of. It often happens that when you set to describe someone else, what you actually create is self description, vivid, informative, and impossible to fake.

Notice, that when I was checking into the hotel, I had zero idea of this book, or its author. I was just hanging around in idleness, and that's it.

There’s been a lot of debate recently, on whether it is more important to read books, or analyse them, in a scholarly way

(Obviously, ‘analyse them’ sounds as a more rigorous, sophisticated and high status answer)

Now that’s what I think:

I think of Gesta Romanorum. A medieval collection of entertaining stories, often bawdy ones, many of which were borrowed from the classical authors. But. The medieval monks who did the compilation did not just leave it as it is, but supplanted their stories with a commentary (a sort of ‘analysis’).

That’s how it looks like:

So, basically, every story - and these are usually naughty stories, has this ‘application’ section in the end. Where its contents are ‘analysed’ from the perspective of Christian morality.

Obviously, all or almost all of this analysis is BS, in a sense, that the original author (remember, most stories are classic, coming from the Greco-Roman world) did not mean anything like that. Originally, it was the well-known ‘I hate my wife’ kind of joke. (the earliest version of this anecdote comes from Cicero).

Based on this classification, it is a classical boomer joke, from the Roman world

So what is interesting here, is that the whole ‘analysis’ below the story, was just the made up stuff that the author never meant in the first place. And, I would argue, that this is a typical experience for the literary/critical analyses, rather than some sort of abnormality. Because the people doing analysis are not some celestial beings of pure reason, but rather the living humans, living within the intellectual, ideological and institutional context of the era.

And so the scholar ‘analysing’ the stuff does not just analyse it out of random based on some supposed considerations of pure reason. They are analysing based on the established narratives, accepted by the institutions they are operating in, and from the perspective of these institutions. So, a medieval monk, ‘analysing’ an angry boomer joke of the ancient world, will analyse it from the perspective of Christology, because nothing else would be accepted by his institution (= the monastery).

So, it's not just that the ‘analysers’ of texts can make up stuff, inventing the interpretations that were never meant, nor thought of by the author. It is also that they are not free in which interpretations to choose. If they exist within an institution, that means they are bound by it, and by its official narrative. So, analysis very often works as a sort of Rorschach test, except what it reveals is the official ideology (and epistemology) of governing institutions, rather than the sub-consciousness of a viewer.

Alexander Pushkin is widely credited as the creator of modern Russian language. And rightfully so: everything produced after Pushkin is easily readable today. Everything written before his age, can be read only with some effort1. He did literally set a standard that everyone else followed, and that would be chosen as the model for the later state enforced standard curriculum.

His whole upbringing, whole education, was in French. 90% of his training as an author was reading, and emulating the French writers.

Let me quote a very good book of memoirs, and testimonies on Pushkin’s life2:

In childhood, Pushkin would sneak into his father’s library to read the comedies of Molière. Under the impression of his readings, he started writing similar comedies, and also in French. Together with his sister Olga, they built a scene in their nursery, to play these comedies. He was the playwright and the actor, while she represented the audience. One of these comedies was called ‘Escamoteur’ (The Kidnapper), and Olga did not like this play at all. She booed the play.

All of that made their uncle to compose a quatrain:

Dis moi, pourquoi l’Escamoteur
Est-il sifflé par le parterre?
Hélas ! c’est que le pauvre auteur
L’escamota de Molière.

Tell me, why was the kidnapper,
Booed at, in the stalls?
Alas! because the poor author
Kidnapped it from Moliere

I find this story very interesting, and in multiple respects. It shows the optimal conditions for the upbringing of a talent (because Pushkin was a talent, most certainly). The importance of the environment, of the early input, of the family imprints. Notice, that although it was Pushkin who was later to become a great poet, his uncle also versed, and not badly. There was clearly a happy match between the personal inclinations (and abilities) of a child, and the values & habits of his family.

Between what young Pushkin could do, and what his family could provide3.

It also shows how exactly is the talent being polished. Through play, and imitation. Non-seriously (just for fun!), and always through the imitation of something else, something else that serves as the original input.

One might imagine a ‘genius’, as a kind of baron Münchhausen, pulling himself out of the swamp, by hair. But in reality, that never happens. Like you cannot do that, you cannot just invent everything yourself from the first principles4. You need some sources, need some models to emulate. And, by emulating them, you are becoming better, and better, and better, until you finally can produce something new, that carries only a slight resemblance of the ultimate sources of your inspiration.

Do not overestimate the originality. Everything interesting, everything powerful develops through the imitation, only.

Next. Like you should not overestimate the originality of a lone genius (he always, has his own sources), you should not overestimate the originality of a whole culture. Nationalist narratives like to present a culture as a thing-in-itself, flowing out of itself, and having itself as its only source. So, as a sort of Münchhausen pulling himself out of the bog, by his own hair.

But - as we’ve already established - this kind of thing never happens. It is purely imaginary. However offensive and unacceptable that may sound from a purely nationalist perspective, cultures are inter-connected, and inter-webbed with each other in many unobvious ways, and your particular culture (whatever it may be), has an imprint of the innumerable alien influences that you have no idea about.

For example, the modern literary Russian, bears a huuuuuuuge imprint of the French, being coined in the era of the uncontested French cultural supremacy in Europe. France was the hegemon, French was the cultural standard, and, if Alexander Pushkin cared about the authors like Shakespeare at all, that was only because at some point in the 18th c, Shakespeare became legit in France (I blame Voltaire).

A stream does not flow out of itself. It always has something else, as its original source. And the source of classical Russian culture and literature, lied in France

One thing you need to understand about the pre-modern France, is that was fucking huge. Absolutely enormous, in terms of population. In Europe, it played the role - roughly, very roughly - comparable with the role that China played in the East Asia. France, was China, and the rest of Europe, was its Sinosphere.

***

Now what did Alexander Pushkin, raised on the French culture, and trained on the emulation of French writers, advise other Russian writers to do? What did he recommend to do, to the younger generation of Russian authors following him?

Or, it’s very funny, indeed

To the younger poets, who saw him as a star, and revered him, he advised to not write French verses (!). It’s bad, and makes a bad practice for your Russian versification skills. That’s what Pushkin said, to others.

In his later years, he was discouraging others from following his own footsteps, and from doing what he himself had done in his youth.

As Friedrich List put it. List, of course, referred to the economic development, but, I think that this kind of framing may be applicable to other kinds of development as well:

‘It is a very common clever device that when anyone has attained the summit of greatness, he kicks away the ladder by which he has climbed up, in order to deprive others of the means of climbing up after him’

(Friedrich List, The National System of Political Economy)

It’s difficult for me to shake off the feeling that Pushkin was, in a way, kicking the ladder behind himself, and leveraging his authority (huge) to block his own path, to others.

It’s very common for people on the later stages of life to develop the systems of views they would laugh and scorn at in their young age. And, if they followed these systems when they were younger, they would never ever accomplish anything interesting or important.

I don’t imply any nasty scheme, or a conscious plan, but - just the normal human instinct to shut the door behind yourself.

Here I want to suggest you an exercise. You can (and I think you should) organise yourself a month-long course in political theory. How? By reading Ronald Syme The Roman Revolution.

It is a very, very intense and unsentimental book covering the political transition of Rome, from Republic to Empire, and centred around the personal career of Octavian Augustus, a small-town bourgeois from the province to become the First Emperor.

It is very rarely that I see a book so informative, and more importantly so realistic when it comes to the representation of political mechanics. Of how the things actually work in this world, based on the empirical evidence we have.

You see, when people say ‘political theory’, what they usually mean is some kind of intellectual history (“what intellectuals have been writing on this or that”). Cool enough, but that is not what we are talking about.

And when they say ‘political science’, they are usually referring to a modern pseudo-science, a poor & thoughtless imitation of natural sciences, driven primarily by the penis envy of humanities departments towards the STEM folk.

Neither of these disciplines gives a good understanding of how the politics work.

You must expect that any realistic account, will be almost by definition historical, because it will be based on the empirical evidence, and all the empirical evidence we have, belongs to the past. And yet, for the most part, historians fail to deliver, because they (most of them) are simply not brilliant enough.

You see, there is a very common problem among the historians. They are smart, conscientious, hardworking. Their material can be interesting, and genuinely curious to read. But whenever they step aside from quoting/describing their sources and try to make some kind of personal judgement, it strikes you as a mix of stupid and naive. And, since analysis is inseparable from the art of making a judgement, in the end you find their conclusions disappointingly dull.

They can dig out some interesting factoids. What they can’t do is generalise.

Now the book of Syme, is an exceedingly rare example of a structured and methodical analysis of the empirical evidence, showing the general patterns of political life, be it in the Principate-era Rome, or in the North America of nowadays. Much of what Syme is writing about, is not place- and era-specific, but more or less universal, and can be applied to the great many cases across times and ages.

Reading of Caesar, reading of August, will help you to better understand Mao Zedong. In fact, reading of Caesar and August may be the shortcut for understanding Mao Zedong. That is partially because the age of Caesars is distant enough, that we can treat it impartially, in an analytical and cold-blooded way. With Mao, or Lenin, on the other hand, we just… can’t. They are too close to us, and our lenses get fogged by the ideological holy wars of nowadays.

I would even say that the history of ancient Rome may be occupying a sweet spot: distant enough to be viewed neutrally, and without too much of a partisan bias, and close enough to be understandable and relatable to a modern-day person. That makes it a great starting point, to be learning the politics from. Start with Sulla, start with Marius, and from there move towards Lenin and Kerensky. Not the other way around.

But you don’t have to study Rome, merely for its own sake. What matters, and what interests us the most is general patterns, of human history and human politics.

You can see the brilliance of Syme, on how he makes his judgements, and, especially, his general remarks. I will give you some of the shorter, and more aphoristic ones:

“Whatever the form and name of government, an oligarchy lurks behind the façade”

“Without a party a statesman is nothing”

“A democracy cannot rule an empire”

“ No oligarchy could survive if its members refused to abide by the rules”

“Naked despotism is vulnerable.”

Each of them deserves (and will get) a detailed commentary, but later. For now, I will only add that it is a pretty harsh and unsentimental view on politics, but - at the same time, a view very far from the primitive machiavellianism, “might-makes-right” style. That is partially because might-makes-right paradigm raises more questions than it answers. Like, okay, might makes right, that is fine. But what makes might?

Now Syme sets to answer that very difficult, and paradoxical question. And his book has great many clues, on what makes might, and what the might even is, politically speaking. That I will be covering later. For now I will only state that Syme is a master of both making a judgement, and presenting it to the audience. Notice, how his judgements can be very explicit, very concise and also - often very aphotistic.

They count for only a very small part of his book, and yet they make a centrally important element of it.

Now there is another thing I like about this author. Unlike in the conventions of modern trade books, Syme gives tons of quotes & citations many of which are not even translated to English. Some of them in Latin, some of them in Greek. So, in a footnote you will often see a long quote written with strange Greek letters, and you won’t even understand what it means.

And that is great!

That is great, because it shows you both the taste & flavour of the ancient Roman culture and the scale of your own ignorance. You will see how dumb you are. Before reading Syme, I, for example, never imagined that much of the ancient Latin literature and private correspondence sounds like the dialogues from the War and Peace.

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The results of the Iranian war are now only preliminary. And yet, we can already make a general estimate of where the things are turning:

1. The Crowd-made Conscience is a harlot bold. People love winners, and hate losers. When Iran was seen as a weaker, losing side of the conflict, it was a target of the most extreme, and the most exaggerated public attacks. Now, when Iran is (correctly) understood as the winner, you must expect that the public opinion, in the United States, and otherwise, will be adjusting accordingly.

   The ‘Evil Islamic Regime’ was seen as such only as long as it was perceived as hapless. Once it has demonstrated viability, public figures will start discovering it had never been so bad all along. Which means that the earlier attacks/public criticism of it, had rarely been genuine all along. When people were implying that Iran is evil, what they actually meant is that it is weak, hapless.

   As a result of this war, Iran has demonstrated far more robustness and viability, than pretty much anyone (including myself) had expected. I, personally, was surprised. And that means that the status and the international standing of Iran will be changing. If it was weak, it could be treated as a ‘rogue state’, essentially as a gang of bandits. Once it has made the superpower to back off, it cannot be seen as such any longer, and will be treated as a legitimate party.

2. It is, however, interesting to question why could Iran beat everyone’s expectations (including mine). I would even narrow this question down: why could it beat everyone’s expectations specifically in the conflict with the United States. I think one reason could be: hubris delta. When you are winning, and winning, and winning, and easily beating everyone receiving no effective pushback - like the United States had been winning globally (and Russia, in the post Soviet space!), you develop exaggerated idea of your own powers, and - at the same time - exaggerated contempt to pretty much everyone else.

   And that is wrong. Because the chain of defeats, or rather, a chain of humiliations, does often cause a stimulating effect on the humiliated party. See Putin’s mistake in Ukraine. He had been publicly humiliating it for eight years, without finishing it. As a result, the Ukrainian military machine evolved. Defeats and humiliations had a stimulating effect.

   I have a strong reason to believe, that the hardships and humiliations of the preceding years, and decades, caused a significant stimulating effect on the Iranian military and industrial machine. The Western media mocked them as hapless buffoons, while in fact the Iranians were making multiple decisions and microdecisions that were fundamentally correct, and would make them very much more robust in a major military conflict. And yet, the American public opinion (and the public opinion matters) did not grasp the nature of this progress.

   I, personally, incline to an idea that the Iranian political leadership has a far better understanding of the economics of warfare (specifically, of their industrial applications) than the American one does. And, in a protracted conflict, that is the thing that matters. You don’t just need to produce the stuff that will work sufficiently well. You need to produce lots of it, and produce it cheap. Iranians understand this idea - and its practical implications. Americans, not so much.

   That is why Iran can wage, and win a war with very limited resources

3. Iranian victory in this war, is largely a result of the United States backing off, while they could, theoretically speaking, continue to press forward. In fact, many political regimes all over the world would do exactly that. They may have been dragged into the war, based on faulty and misrepresented information, and then keep pressing forward, because they see no alternative.

   The American decision, on the other hand, shows a great capacity for self-correction, far more than you could normally expect. The political leadership has to back off, because it feels the domestic political pressure, and it at the same time can back off, because the loss of power (= pretty much guaranteed in case of defeat) is no great catastrophe. That Trump, Vance, and others chose to back off suggests that they, all of them, are ready to step down.

   If the idea of stepping down was absolutely unacceptable (like it is for the Russian leadership, for example), the White Housers would keep throwing more and more men and resources into the fire of war, hoping to extract some sort of a victory. (exactly like Putin is doing).

   In this light, the rumours about the demise of the American democracy seem to be greatly exaggerated. Part of what defines autocracy, is that you cannot step down, this option does not exist, they will tear you to pieces. And, as stepping down is not an option, you can never admit a defeat, and never do self-correction. America is far, very far from this state of affairs, yet.

   Implication: do not prosecute Trumps and Trumpists, when they step down, or be very cautious with such prosecutions. If you put them to jail, you will not so much deter any future political leadership from doing crimes, as you will deter them from stepping down from power. That is why, you must abstain from revenge, when these guys will be leaving the office.

4. This war, and the Iranian victory in this war - will have massive reverberations, both in the world, and in the United States. For the United States, its reverberations are going to be positive. Fundamentally, losing to Iran is a good thing for America. And the primary reason for that is not that the Iranian regime/system is better (no, actually the American one is nicer), but that in the absence of an effective pushback the American system is going nuts. That is a real problem.

   And that is a major reason why America under-punched in this war, not meeting almost everyone’s expectations. You see, America, or a great part of America, did not want to win. It wanted to lose. And the reason they wanted to lose is not that they are secretly pro-Iranian or bribed by Tehran - almost all the accusations in foreign collusion are false - but because they wanted some sort of pushback, wanted some sort of external boundary to their own actions.

   And that is a very interesting thing to think about. Because of all the major pretenders for the global hegemony in the past centuries - Britain, France, Spain, Germany, Russia, Japan or others - America made the most hesitant, the most reluctant global hegemon of all. The imperial expansion, the conquests overseas, the growth of the government apparatus associated with foreign wars etc, has been always seen with deep suspicion, and at times - fear.

   What is particularly striking about the American empire is not that it is unpopular abroad, among the coloured races, who feel sort of suppressed by it (that is understandable). What is interesting, and unusual is that it is unpopular among its own population, that feels remarkably little enthusiasm about any sort of foreign victories or whatever. Many times less, than in any European colonial power of old.

   I think that the primary reason for that is that America is, fundamentally, a republic. And its own core population is committed to seeing it as a republic, wants to remain a republic, enjoys being a republic. Now that creates a problem for the domestic political image of the American empire, making the latter deeply unpopular. For the people feel, even if they cannot formulate it explicitly, that having an empire is, in the long run, incompatible with being a republic.

   One has to go.

That is correct. But that’s not the whole truth. The whole truth is that the regular humans themselves, do often have a strong preference for monotony

I really like this story from Jean Renoir’s book of memoirs Renoir: My father.

(By the way, you absolutely should read this book. What every Anglo needs, is a regular inoculation of French culture, just to keep sane)

So, what does Jean Renoir tell us:

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First, we need to understand the culture we live in. Most of our life, we spend within the confinement of large, bureaucratic structures. School. University. Corporation. All of that under the umbrella of a yet greater and more Leviathan-ish bureaucracy of the state machine.

It is the bureaucracy that sets the rules, and it is the bureaucratic preferences that we must (and will) adjust to, and not the other way around. It is very important to understand that. Now one thing you need to realise about bureaucracy is that it has a strong (extremely strong!) preference for monotony.

That is only natural. Bureaucracy does not know reality, and cannot process reality in all of its complexity (no one can). All it can work with is very simple mental models, based on a few standard categories, and few parameters you need to optimise for. Now what you need to know is that bureaucracy does not choose the most accurate model (also, how does it know it is the most accurate), but the more scaleable one.

When I say scaleable, I mean that you can give this model to an average, or somewhere below the average executors, and they will understand it more or less correctly, and will perform standard, predictable actions based on it. And that the upper management high above will understand what these executors are doing, again, more or less correctly. And that is only possible when you are doing standard operations, with standard objects, based on the transparent (important!) criteria.

Bureaucracy hates diversity, and does not know what to do with it. Everything it knows it how to works with a few categories of objects and optimise for a few parameters. That is the perfect world from the bureaucratic perspective. That’s what informs its preferences. Consequently, whenever possible it will be selecting for monotony, and against diversity, over the long run creating the most monotonous landscape possible. Physical. Social. Intellectual.

You have a preference for monotony. You are selecting for monotony. And, in the end, you end up with monotony, as all types of actors (including humans) will be adjusting themselves for your preferences.

This largely comes from necessity. Everything outstanding, unusual, bizarre - puzzles bureaucracy, as its mental models are simply not fit to deal with it. The most it can do, is to classify the object not falling into any of its standard categories, into the separate category of ‘bizarre’, and throw it all away, into the trashbin.

Bureaucracy is based on transparency, it is based on objectivity, because otherwise it will simply not work. It can work only with what is transparent and legible. It can work only with the well known. Now a great deal of stuff is not very well known, and much of what is not well known is important.

Frame it this way, and you will realise how a great mighty industrial company from the US or Europe suddenly loses everything to a palaeolithic workshop from China. The great and mighty are strictly limited to what is under the lamppost. The shameful and deplorable can venture outside. In fact they must, because everything under the lamppost has been already devoured by the great and mighty. They HAVE TO venture outside, into the epistemological darkness

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There is a common wisdom that men of thought want to be the men of action and men of action want to be the men of thought. I think there’s lots of truth in that. Because there’s little overlap between the two, and, yes, of course, the grass is always greener on the other side.

Although praised, and canonised as a theoretician, he was first and foremost a practical politician of the enormous calibre. And the correct way of reading his works, is through the practical, pragmatic lenses.

Will you find there some deep theoretical insights about the fates of humanity? Well, yes, but not many, and not very deep ones. In this particular regard, he was okayish, but not spectacularly good. Second, or third rate thinker. No more.

What he was spectacularly good at, is sharp & deep observations on the practical issues of political struggle. What you can find in his works, is some extremely good practical advice (and not only on politics)

For example. There is a short article, named Where to start? (1901) summarising the plan for his future party (or rather, his faction within the Russian social democrat party). Where should you start, what will be your step one when launching a new movement?

And Lenin’s answer is:

There are many reasons for that.

But the real reason is: when you start propagating your creed, that will force you to formulate that creed in the first place. So, although you are writing to persuade others, in the process of writing you will discover what you yourself believe in. Because although you have some views, of course, they are vague, unclear, obscure, even to you. Writing and publishing, writing and publishing - that’s how you will sort it out.

So, ideology, and political stance is not something that precedes propaganda. It is something that is being figured out, in the process. Preaching to the flock, that’s how you discover your own symbol of faith.

And that is important, because you need a coherent system of views to persuade anyone. Nobody will listen to you if you are preaching some incoherent mess. BUT to work out a coherent system of views, you must put yourself in a position that will force you to sort it out. Otherwise, you will never do it, practically speaking

So, what would Vladimir Lenin advice today, in our age? I think his advice would be:

Start with a YouTube. Start with videos.

Start with the ‘low’ genres, and with the formats that the audience does actually consume. Start with the fast to create products, that will allow you to speed up your feedback loop from the audience. The platforms that will allow you to scale up.

In his day and age, newspapers and broadsheets were a low status product. Not something very important, not perhaps something very respected. But that was a kind of product that was absolutely booming, and that meant - people were reading it. People were listening. And a public intellectual with the political ambitions (= who Lenin was) had to come out to the people, had to find out where they were, and come there.

Everyone is starting a newspaper → You, too must start a newspaper

Everyone is starting a podcast → You, too must start it

You have to come out to the agora, to the market square, and there talk with people on their own terms, and in a language they will understand. That's what you should be doing as a public intellectual.

And Lenin understood it better than anyone

In this context, I cannot help but to draw a comparison with Plato

Plato was an impossibly good man of thought, perhaps, the single best one in the recorded history. His insights, are incredible, divine.

But as a man of action, and as a practical politician, he was a child. Absolute toddler. In (political) action, Vladimir Lenin towered above Plato just as much as Plato towered above him in thought.

Plato of course wanted power. Nearly all intellectuals do. But - wanting power - he was childishly naive and childishly delusional about how he will get it. For what was his plan?

1. Approach a tyrant, a man in power

2. Become his advisor, a power behind the throne

3. Use the tyrant to execute your plans & your agenda

The plan is incredibly common (countless intellectuals would try it in centuries after Plato), and incredibly naive. Because obviously no man in power needs a 'philosopher’ who would be telling him what to do. That is an absolute self delusion on behalf of a philosopher. A tyrant needs servants, he needs slavs, he - if he is mentally healthy - needs a jester. But philosopher? No, he does not really need one.

What is more, Plato's plan was sort of… undignified. I mean, in a childish way. He does not want to seize power, he does not want to fight for power. He wants to find a man who already has what he wants, and use his resource as if it was his own.

The audacity. No wonder the guy sold him to slavery, in the end

Lenin, the practical man, approached this problem with clear sightedness, and with dignity that Plato, the thinker, seemingly never acquired. I cannot find a man who will just give me away his power thought Lenin. Nor will I find anyone who will just obey me, and do what I tell him to do. If I want power, I must be self reliant, and rely on my own forces, and build it bit by a bit, step by step, from almost nothing.

There is much more dignity in Lenin's scheme, than there's in Plato's. Much more self reliance. In this, practical regard, Lenin compares to Plato, like an adult would to a child.