russia-insider--2020-12-14--4 Signposts of American Collapse Which Also Occurred in the USSR

This article from our archives was first published on RI in June 2018 Orlov is one of our favorite essayists on Russia and all sorts of other things .
He moved to the US as a child , and lives in the Boston area .
He is one of the better-known thinkers The New Yorker has dubbed 'The Dystopians ' in an excellent 2009 profile , along with James Howard Kunstler , another regular contributor to RI ( archive ) .
These theorists believe that modern society is headed for a jarring and painful crack-up .
He is best known @ @ @ @ @ @ @ American collapse ( he thinks America 's will be worse ) .
He is a prolific author on a wide array of subjects , and you can see his work by searching him on Amazon .
He has a large following on the web , and on Patreon , and we urge you to support him there , as Russia Insider does .
His current project is organizing the production of affordable house boats for living on .
He lives on a boat himself .
If you have n't discovered his work yet @ @ @ @ @ @ @ archive of articles on RI .
They are a real treasure , full of invaluable insight into both the US and Russia and how they are related .
In thinking through the ( for now ) gradually unfolding collapse of the American empire , the collapse of the USSR , which occurred close through three decades ago , continues to perform as a goldmine of useful examples and analogies .
Certain events that occurred during the Soviet collapse can serve as useful signposts in the American one , allowing us to formulate better @ @ @ @ @ @ @ can suddenly turn a gradual collapse into a precipitous one .
When the Soviet collapse occurred , the universal reaction was “ Who could have known ?
” Well , I knew .
I distinctly remember a conversation I had with a surgeon in the summer of 1990 , right as I was going under the knife to get my appendix excised , waiting for the anesthesia to kick in .
He asked me about what will happen to the Soviet republics , Armenia in particular .
I told him that they will @ @ @ @ @ @ @ .
He looked positively shocked .
I was off by a couple of months .
I hope to be able to call the American collapse with the same degree of precision .
I suppose I was well positioned to know , and I am tempted to venture a guess at how I achieved that .
My area of expertise at the time was measurement and data acquisition electronics for high energy physics experiments , not Sovietology .
But I spent the previous summer in Leningrad , where I grew up , and had @ @ @ @ @ @ @ in the USSR .
Meanwhile , the entire gaggle of actual paid , professional Russia experts that was ensconced in various government agencies in Washington or consuming oxygen at various foundations and universities in the US had absolutely no idea what to expect .
I suspect that there is a principle involved : if your career depends on the continued existence of X , and if X is about to cease to exist , then you are not going to be highly motivated to accurately predict that event .
Conversely , if you @ @ @ @ @ @ @ existence failure of X , then you would also be clever enough to switch careers ahead of time , hence would no longer be an expert on X and your opinion on the matter would be disregarded .
People would think that you screwed yourself out of a perfectly good job and are now embittered .
Right now I am observing the same phenomenon at work among Russian experts on the United States : they can ’ t imagine that the various things they spent their lives studying are fast fading into irrelevance @ @ @ @ @ @ @ keep this realization to themselves , for fear of no longer being invited on talk shows .
I suppose that since expertise is a matter of knowing a whole lot about very little , knowing everything about nothing—a thing that doesn ’ t exist—is its logical endpoint .
Be that as it may .
But I feel that we non-experts , armed with the 20/20 hindsight afforded to us by the example of the Soviet collapse , can avoid being similarly blindsided and dumbfounded by the American one .
This is not an @ @ @ @ @ @ @ accurately may be able to get the hell out ahead of time , while the lights are mostly still on , while not everybody is walking around in a drug-induced mental haze , and mass shootings and other types of mayhem are still considered newsworthy .
This hindsight makes it possible for us to spot certain markers that showed up then and are showing up now .
The four that I want to discuss now are the following : 1 .
Allies are being alienated 2 .
Enmities dissipate 3 .
Ideology becomes @ @ @ @ @ @ @ All of these are plain to see already in the American collapse .
As with the Soviet collapse , there is a certain incubation period for each of these trends , lasting perhaps a year or two , during which not much seems to be happening , but when it is over everything comes unstuck all at once .
1 .
Alliances As the Soviet collapse unfolded , former friendships deteriorated , first into irrelevance , then into outright enmity .
Prior to the collapse , the Iron Curtain ran between Eastern and @ @ @ @ @ @ @ runs between Russia and the Baltic countries , Poland and the Ukraine .
Whereas in the post-war period the Warsaw Pact countries derived many benefits from its association with Russia and its industrial might , as the end neared their membership in the Soviet camp became more and more of a hinderance to progress , hampering their integration with the more prosperous , less troubled countries further west and with the rest of the world .
Similarly with the US and the EU now , this partnership is also showing major signs of @ @ @ @ @ @ @ Europe from integrating with the rest of Eurasia .
The particular threat of unilateral economic sanctions as part of a vain effort to block additional Russian natural gas pipelines into Europe and to force the Europeans to buy an uncertain and overpriced American liquefied natural gas scheme has laid bare the fact that the relationship is no longer mutually beneficial .
And as Britain splits from Europe and clings closer to the US , a new Iron Curtain is gradually emerging , but this time it will run through the English Channel , @ @ @ @ @ @ @ Similar developments are afoot in the east , affecting South Korea and Japan .
Trump ’ s flip-flopping between tempestuous tweeting and conciliatory rhetoric vis-à-vis North Korea have laid bare the emptiness of American security guarantees .
Both of these countries now see the need to make their own security arrangements and to start reasserting their sovereignty in military matters .
Meanwhile , for the US , being incoherent is but a pit stop on the way to becoming irrelevant .
2 .
Enmities During the entire period of the Cold War the @ @ @ @ @ @ @ s arch-enemy , and any effort by Washington to give advice or to dictate terms was met with loud , synchronized , ideologically fortified barking from Moscow : the imperialist aggressor is at it again ; pay no heed .
This self-righteous noise worked quite well for a surprisingly long time , and continued to work while the Soviet Union was making impressive new conquests—in space , in technology , science and medicine , in international humanitarian projects and so on , but as stagnation set in it started to ring hollow .
@ @ @ @ @ @ @ against American contagion disappeared .
Western “ experts ” and “ advisors ” flooded in , and proposed “ reforms ” such as dismemberment of the USSR into 15 separate countries ( trapping millions of people on the wrong side of some newly thought-up border ) shock therapy ( which impoverished almost the entirety of the Russian population ) , privatization ( which put major public assets in the hands of a few politically connected , mostly Jewish oligarchs ) and various other schemes designed to destroy Russia and drive its population into @ @ @ @ @ @ @ had they not been stopped in time .
Symmetrically , the Washingtonians considered the USSR as their arch-enemy .
After it went away , there was a bit of confusion .
The Pentagon tried talking up “ Russian mafia ” as a major threat to world peace , but that seemed laughable .
Then , by dint of demolishing a couple of New York skyscrapers , perhaps by placing small nuclear charges in the bedrock beneath their foundations ( those were the demolition plans that were on file ) they happily embraced the @ @ @ @ @ @ @ and went about bombing various countries that didn ’ t have a terrorism problem before then but certainly do now .
Then , once that stupid plan ran its course , the Washingtonians went back to reviling and harrassing Russia .
But now a strange smell is in the wind in Washington : the smell of failure .
Air is leaking out of the campaign to vilify Russia , and it is putrid .
Meanwhile , Trump is continuing to make noises to the effect that a rapprochement with Russia is desirable and @ @ @ @ @ @ @ be held .
Trump is also borrowing some pages from the Russian rulebook : just as Russia responded to Western sanctions with countersanctions , Trump is starting to respond to Western tariffs with countertariffs .
We should expect American enmity against Russia to dissipate some time before American attitudes toward Russia ( and much else ) become irrelevant .
We should also expect that , once the fracking bubble pops , the US will become dependent on Russian oil and liquefied natural gas , which it will be forced to pay for with @ @ @ @ @ @ @ combustion process : the first phase burns borrowed money to produce oil and gas ; the second burns the oil and the gas . )
Other enmities are on the wane as well .
Trump has just signed an interesting piece of paper with North Korea ’ s Kim Jong Un .
The deal ( if we call it that ) is a tacit act of surrender .
It was orchestrated by Russia and China .
It affirms what North and South Korea had already agreed to : eventual denuclearization of the Korean @ @ @ @ @ @ @ the reunification of Germany and the withdrawal of Soviet troops from East Germany , Trump is getting ready to acquiesce to the reunification of Korea and the withdrawal of American troops from South Korea .
Just as the fall of the Berlin Wall spelled the end of the Soviet imperium , the dismantlement of the Korean Demilitarized Zone will spell the end of the American one .
3 .
Ideology While the US never had anything as rigorous as the Soviet Union ’ s communist dogma , its hodgepodge of pro-democracy propaganda , @ @ @ @ @ @ @ domination was potent for a time .
Once the US stopped being the world ’ s largest industrial powerhouse , ceding ground first to Germany and Japan , then to China , it went along accumulating prodigious levels of debt , essentially confiscating and spending the world ’ s savings , while defending the US dollar with the threat of violence .
It was , for a time , understood that the exorbitant privilege of endless money printing needs to be defended with the blood of American soldiers .
The US saw itself @ @ @ @ @ @ @ indispensable country , able to control and to dictate terms to the entire planet , terrorizing or blockading various other countries as needed .
Now all of these ideological shibboleths are in shambles .
• The pro-democracy rhetoric is still dutifully spouted by politicians mass media mouthpieces , but in practice the US is no longer a democracy .
It has been turned into a lobbyist ’ s paradise in which the lobbyists are no longer confined to the lobby but have installed themselves in congressional offices and are drafting prodigious quantities of @ @ @ @ @ @ @ corporations and oligarchs .
Nor is the American penchant for democracy traceable in the support the US lavishes on dictatorships around the world or in its increasing tendency to enact and enforce extraterritorial laws without international consent .
Laissez-fair capitalism is also very much dead , supplanted by crony capitalism nurtured by a thorough melding of Washington and Wall Street elites .
Private enterprise is no longer free but concentrated in a handful of giant corporations while about a third of the employed population in the US works in the public sector .
@ @ @ @ @ @ @ largest single employer in the country as well as in the whole world .
About 100 million of working-age able-bodied Americans do not work .
Most of the rest work in service jobs , producing nothing durable .
An increasing number of people is holding onto a precarious livelihood by working sporadic gigs .
The whole system is fueled—including parts of it that actually produce the fuel , such as the fracking industry—by debt .
No sane person , if asked to provide a workable description of capitalism , would come up with @ @ @ @ @ @ @ was talked up until very recently , if not actually implemented .
Unimpeded trade over great distances is the sine qua non of all empires , the US empire included .
In the past , warships and the threat of occupation were used to force countries , such as Japan , to open themselves up to international trade .
Quite recently , the Obama administration was quite active in its attempts to push through various transoceanic partnerships , but none of them succeeded .
And now Trump has set about wrecking what free @ @ @ @ @ @ @ sanctions and tariffs , in a misguided attempt to rekindle America ’ s lost greatness by turning inward .
Along the way , sanctions on the use of the US dollar in international trade , especially with key energy exporting nations such as Iran and Venezuela , are accelerating the process by which the US dollar is being dethroned as the world ’ s reserve currency , demolishing America ’ s exorbitant privilege of endless money-printing .
4 .
Militarism The Soviet collapse was to some extent presaged by the Soviet withdrawal from @ @ @ @ @ @ @ it was still possible to talk up the “ international duty ” of the Red Army to make the world ( or at least the liberated parts of it ) safe for socialism .
After that point the very concept of military domination was lost , and interventions that were possible before , such as in Hungary in 1956 and in Czechoslovakia in 1968 , were no longer even thinkable .
When Eastern Europe rose in rebellion in 1989 , the Soviet military empire simply folded , abandoning its bases and military hardware @ @ @ @ @ @ @ of the US , for now it remains capable of quite a lot of mischief , but it has become clear that military domination of the whole planet is no longer possible for it .
The US military is still huge , but it is quite flaccid .
It is no longer able to field a ground force of any size and confines itself to aerial bombardment , training and arming of “ moderate terrorists ” and mercenaries , and pointless steaming about the oceans .
None of the recent military adventures have @ @ @ @ @ @ @ that the American planners originally envisioned or have ever considered desirable : Afghanistan has been turned into a terrorist incubator and a heroin factory ; Iraq has been absorbed into a continuous Shia crescent that now runs from the Indian Ocean to the Mediterranean Sea .
US military bases are still found throughout the world .
They were meant to project American power over both hemispheres of the globe , but they have been largely neutralized by the advent of new long-range precision weapons , potent air defense technology and electronic warfare wizardry @ @ @ @ @ @ @ ” as they are sometimes called , are the opposite of military assets : they are useless but expensive targets located in places that are hard to defend but easy for potential adversaries to attack .
They can only be used for pretend-combat , and the endless series of military training exercises , such as the ones in the Baltic statelets , right on the Russian border , or the ones in South Korea , are meant to be provocative , but they are paragons of pointlessness , since attacking either Russia or @ @ @ @ @ @ @ .
They are basically confidence-building exercises , and their increasing intensity testifies to a pronounced and growing deficit of confidence .
People never tire of pointing out the huge size of the US military budget , but they almost always neglect to mention that what the US gets per unit money is ten times less than , for example Russia .
It is a bloated and ineffectual extortion scheme that produces large quantities of boondoggles—an endlessly thirsty public money sponge .
No matter how much money it soaks up , it will never @ @ @ @ @ @ @ to go to war against any adequately armed opponent without suffering unacceptable levels of damage .
Around the world , the US is still loathed , but it is feared less and less : a fatal trend for an empire .
But America has done quite well in militarizing its local police departments , so that when the time comes it will be ready to go to war… against itself .
* * * This analysis may read like a historical survey detached from practical , everyday considerations .
But I believe that @ @ @ @ @ @ @ citizens of the USSR were informed , prior to the events of 1990 , of what was about to happen to them , they would have behaved quite differently , and quite a lot of personal tragedy might have been avoided .
A very useful distinction can be made between collapse avoidance ( which is futile ; all empires collapse ) and worst-case scenario avoidance , which will become , as collapse picks up speed , your most important concern .
Your approach may involve fleeing to safer ground , or preparing to @ @ @ @ @ @ @ may choose your own collapse markers and make your own predictions about their timing instead of relying on mine .
But , having witnessed one collapse , and now witnessing another , the one approach I would definitely not recommend is doing nothing and hoping for the best .

This article from our archives was first published on RI in June 2018
Orlov is one of our favorite essayists on Russia and all sorts of other things. He moved to the US as a child, and lives in the Boston area.
He is one of the better-known thinkers The New Yorker has dubbed 'The Dystopians' in an excellent 2009 profile, along with James Howard Kunstler, another regular contributor to RI (archive). These theorists believe that modern society is headed for a jarring and painful crack-up.
He is best known for his 2011 book comparing Soviet and American collapse (he thinks America's will be worse). He is a prolific author on a wide array of subjects, and you can see his work by searching him on Amazon.
He has a large following on the web, and on Patreon, and we urge you to support him there, as Russia Insider does.
His current project is organizing the production of affordable house boats for living on. He lives on a boat himself.
If you haven't discovered his work yet, please take a look at his archive of articles on RI. They are a real treasure, full of invaluable insight into both the US and Russia and how they are related.
In thinking through the (for now) gradually unfolding collapse of the American empire, the collapse of the USSR, which occurred close through three decades ago, continues to perform as a goldmine of useful examples and analogies. Certain events that occurred during the Soviet collapse can serve as useful signposts in the American one, allowing us to formulate better guesses about the timing of events that can suddenly turn a gradual collapse into a precipitous one.
When the Soviet collapse occurred, the universal reaction was “Who could have known?” Well, I knew. I distinctly remember a conversation I had with a surgeon in the summer of 1990, right as I was going under the knife to get my appendix excised, waiting for the anesthesia to kick in. He asked me about what will happen to the Soviet republics, Armenia in particular. I told him that they will be independent in less than a year.
He looked positively shocked. I was off by a couple of months. I hope to be able to call the American collapse with the same degree of precision.
I suppose I was well positioned to know, and I am tempted to venture a guess at how I achieved that. My area of expertise at the time was measurement and data acquisition electronics for high energy physics experiments, not Sovietology. But I spent the previous summer in Leningrad, where I grew up, and had a fair idea of what was up in the USSR.
Meanwhile, the entire gaggle of actual paid, professional Russia experts that was ensconced in various government agencies in Washington or consuming oxygen at various foundations and universities in the US had absolutely no idea what to expect.
I suspect that there is a principle involved: if your career depends on the continued existence of X, and if X is about to cease to exist, then you are not going to be highly motivated to accurately predict that event. Conversely, if you could manage to accurately predict the spontaneous existence failure of X, then you would also be clever enough to switch careers ahead of time, hence would no longer be an expert on X and your opinion on the matter would be disregarded. People would think that you screwed yourself out of a perfectly good job and are now embittered.
Right now I am observing the same phenomenon at work among Russian experts on the United States: they can’t imagine that the various things they spent their lives studying are fast fading into irrelevance. Or perhaps they can, but keep this realization to themselves, for fear of no longer being invited on talk shows.
I suppose that since expertise is a matter of knowing a whole lot about very little, knowing everything about nothing—a thing that doesn’t exist—is its logical endpoint. Be that as it may. But I feel that we non-experts, armed with the 20/20 hindsight afforded to us by the example of the Soviet collapse, can avoid being similarly blindsided and dumbfounded by the American one.
This is not an academic question: those who gauge it accurately may be able to get the hell out ahead of time, while the lights are mostly still on, while not everybody is walking around in a drug-induced mental haze, and mass shootings and other types of mayhem are still considered newsworthy.
This hindsight makes it possible for us to spot certain markers that showed up then and are showing up now. The four that I want to discuss now are the following:
1. Allies are being alienated
2. Enmities dissipate
3. Ideology becomes irrelevant
4. Military posture turns flaccid
All of these are plain to see already in the American collapse. As with the Soviet collapse, there is a certain incubation period for each of these trends, lasting perhaps a year or two, during which not much seems to be happening, but when it is over everything comes unstuck all at once.
1. Alliances
As the Soviet collapse unfolded, former friendships deteriorated, first into irrelevance, then into outright enmity. Prior to the collapse, the Iron Curtain ran between Eastern and Western Europe; three decades later it runs between Russia and the Baltic countries, Poland and the Ukraine.
Whereas in the post-war period the Warsaw Pact countries derived many benefits from its association with Russia and its industrial might, as the end neared their membership in the Soviet camp became more and more of a hinderance to progress, hampering their integration with the more prosperous, less troubled countries further west and with the rest of the world.
Similarly with the US and the EU now, this partnership is also showing major signs of strain as Washington tries to prevent the Europe from integrating with the rest of Eurasia. The particular threat of unilateral economic sanctions as part of a vain effort to block additional Russian natural gas pipelines into Europe and to force the Europeans to buy an uncertain and overpriced American liquefied natural gas scheme has laid bare the fact that the relationship is no longer mutually beneficial. And as Britain splits from Europe and clings closer to the US, a new Iron Curtain is gradually emerging, but this time it will run through the English Channel, separating the Anglophone world from Eurasia.
Similar developments are afoot in the east, affecting South Korea and Japan. Trump’s flip-flopping between tempestuous tweeting and conciliatory rhetoric vis-à-vis North Korea have laid bare the emptiness of American security guarantees. Both of these countries now see the need to make their own security arrangements and to start reasserting their sovereignty in military matters. Meanwhile, for the US, being incoherent is but a pit stop on the way to becoming irrelevant.
2. Enmities
During the entire period of the Cold War the United States was the Soviet Union’s arch-enemy, and any effort by Washington to give advice or to dictate terms was met with loud, synchronized, ideologically fortified barking from Moscow: the imperialist aggressor is at it again; pay no heed. This self-righteous noise worked quite well for a surprisingly long time, and continued to work while the Soviet Union was making impressive new conquests—in space, in technology, science and medicine, in international humanitarian projects and so on, but as stagnation set in it started to ring hollow.
After the Soviet collapse, this immunity against American contagion disappeared. Western “experts” and “advisors” flooded in, and proposed “reforms” such as dismemberment of the USSR into 15 separate countries (trapping millions of people on the wrong side of some newly thought-up border) shock therapy (which impoverished almost the entirety of the Russian population), privatization (which put major public assets in the hands of a few politically connected, mostly Jewish oligarchs) and various other schemes designed to destroy Russia and drive its population into extinction.
They would probably have succeeded had they not been stopped in time.
Symmetrically, the Washingtonians considered the USSR as their arch-enemy. After it went away, there was a bit of confusion. The Pentagon tried talking up “Russian mafia” as a major threat to world peace, but that seemed laughable. Then, by dint of demolishing a couple of New York skyscrapers, perhaps by placing small nuclear charges in the bedrock beneath their foundations (those were the demolition plans that were on file) they happily embraced the concept of “war on terror” and went about bombing various countries that didn’t have a terrorism problem before then but certainly do now.
Then, once that stupid plan ran its course, the Washingtonians went back to reviling and harrassing Russia.
But now a strange smell is in the wind in Washington: the smell of failure. Air is leaking out of the campaign to vilify Russia, and it is putrid. Meanwhile, Trump is continuing to make noises to the effect that a rapprochement with Russia is desirable and that a summit between the leaders should be held. Trump is also borrowing some pages from the Russian rulebook: just as Russia responded to Western sanctions with countersanctions, Trump is starting to respond to Western tariffs with countertariffs. We should expect American enmity against Russia to dissipate some time before American attitudes toward Russia (and much else) become irrelevant.
We should also expect that, once the fracking bubble pops, the US will become dependent on Russian oil and liquefied natural gas, which it will be forced to pay for with gold. (Fracking involves a two-phase combustion process: the first phase burns borrowed money to produce oil and gas; the second burns the oil and the gas.)
Other enmities are on the wane as well. Trump has just signed an interesting piece of paper with North Korea’s Kim Jong Un. The deal (if we call it that) is a tacit act of surrender. It was orchestrated by Russia and China. It affirms what North and South Korea had already agreed to: eventual denuclearization of the Korean peninsula.
Just as Gorbachev acquiesced to the reunification of Germany and the withdrawal of Soviet troops from East Germany, Trump is getting ready to acquiesce to the reunification of Korea and the withdrawal of American troops from South Korea. Just as the fall of the Berlin Wall spelled the end of the Soviet imperium, the dismantlement of the Korean Demilitarized Zone will spell the end of the American one.
3. Ideology
While the US never had anything as rigorous as the Soviet Union’s communist dogma, its hodgepodge of pro-democracy propaganda, laissez-faire capitalism, free trade and military domination was potent for a time. Once the US stopped being the world’s largest industrial powerhouse, ceding ground first to Germany and Japan, then to China, it went along accumulating prodigious levels of debt, essentially confiscating and spending the world’s savings, while defending the US dollar with the threat of violence. It was, for a time, understood that the exorbitant privilege of endless money printing needs to be defended with the blood of American soldiers.
The US saw itself, and positioned itself, as the indispensable country, able to control and to dictate terms to the entire planet, terrorizing or blockading various other countries as needed. Now all of these ideological shibboleths are in shambles.
• The pro-democracy rhetoric is still dutifully spouted by politicians mass media mouthpieces, but in practice the US is no longer a democracy. It has been turned into a lobbyist’s paradise in which the lobbyists are no longer confined to the lobby but have installed themselves in congressional offices and are drafting prodigious quantities of legislation to suit the private interests of corporations and oligarchs. Nor is the American penchant for democracy traceable in the support the US lavishes on dictatorships around the world or in its increasing tendency to enact and enforce extraterritorial laws without international consent.
Laissez-fair capitalism is also very much dead, supplanted by crony capitalism nurtured by a thorough melding of Washington and Wall Street elites. Private enterprise is no longer free but concentrated in a handful of giant corporations while about a third of the employed population in the US works in the public sector. The US Department of Defense is the largest single employer in the country as well as in the whole world. About 100 million of working-age able-bodied Americans do not work. Most of the rest work in service jobs, producing nothing durable.
An increasing number of people is holding onto a precarious livelihood by working sporadic gigs. The whole system is fueled—including parts of it that actually produce the fuel, such as the fracking industry—by debt. No sane person, if asked to provide a workable description of capitalism, would come up with such a derelict scheme.
Free trade was talked up until very recently, if not actually implemented. Unimpeded trade over great distances is the sine qua non of all empires, the US empire included. In the past, warships and the threat of occupation were used to force countries, such as Japan, to open themselves up to international trade.
Quite recently, the Obama administration was quite active in its attempts to push through various transoceanic partnerships, but none of them succeeded. And now Trump has set about wrecking what free trade there was by a combination of sanctions and tariffs, in a misguided attempt to rekindle America’s lost greatness by turning inward. Along the way, sanctions on the use of the US dollar in international trade, especially with key energy exporting nations such as Iran and Venezuela, are accelerating the process by which the US dollar is being dethroned as the world’s reserve currency, demolishing America’s exorbitant privilege of endless money-printing.
4. Militarism
The Soviet collapse was to some extent presaged by the Soviet withdrawal from Afghanistan. Prior to that point, it was still possible to talk up the “international duty” of the Red Army to make the world (or at least the liberated parts of it) safe for socialism. After that point the very concept of military domination was lost, and interventions that were possible before, such as in Hungary in 1956 and in Czechoslovakia in 1968, were no longer even thinkable. When Eastern Europe rose in rebellion in 1989, the Soviet military empire simply folded, abandoning its bases and military hardware and pulling out.
In the case of the US, for now it remains capable of quite a lot of mischief, but it has become clear that military domination of the whole planet is no longer possible for it. The US military is still huge, but it is quite flaccid. It is no longer able to field a ground force of any size and confines itself to aerial bombardment, training and arming of “moderate terrorists” and mercenaries, and pointless steaming about the oceans.
None of the recent military adventures have resulted in anything resembling peace on terms that the American planners originally envisioned or have ever considered desirable: Afghanistan has been turned into a terrorist incubator and a heroin factory; Iraq has been absorbed into a continuous Shia crescent that now runs from the Indian Ocean to the Mediterranean Sea.
US military bases are still found throughout the world. They were meant to project American power over both hemispheres of the globe, but they have been largely neutralized by the advent of new long-range precision weapons, potent air defense technology and electronic warfare wizardry. These numerous “lily pads,” as they are sometimes called, are the opposite of military assets: they are useless but expensive targets located in places that are hard to defend but easy for potential adversaries to attack.
They can only be used for pretend-combat, and the endless series of military training exercises, such as the ones in the Baltic statelets, right on the Russian border, or the ones in South Korea, are meant to be provocative, but they are paragons of pointlessness, since attacking either Russia or North Korea would be a suicidal move. They are basically confidence-building exercises, and their increasing intensity testifies to a pronounced and growing deficit of confidence.
People never tire of pointing out the huge size of the US military budget, but they almost always neglect to mention that what the US gets per unit money is ten times less than, for example Russia. It is a bloated and ineffectual extortion scheme that produces large quantities of boondoggles—an endlessly thirsty public money sponge.
No matter how much money it soaks up, it will never solve the fundamental problem of being incapable to go to war against any adequately armed opponent without suffering unacceptable levels of damage. Around the world, the US is still loathed, but it is feared less and less: a fatal trend for an empire. But America has done quite well in militarizing its local police departments, so that when the time comes it will be ready to go to war… against itself.
* * *
This analysis may read like a historical survey detached from practical, everyday considerations. But I believe that it has practical merit. If the citizens of the USSR were informed, prior to the events of 1990, of what was about to happen to them, they would have behaved quite differently, and quite a lot of personal tragedy might have been avoided.
A very useful distinction can be made between collapse avoidance (which is futile; all empires collapse) and worst-case scenario avoidance, which will become, as collapse picks up speed, your most important concern. Your approach may involve fleeing to safer ground, or preparing to survive it where you are. You may choose your own collapse markers and make your own predictions about their timing instead of relying on mine.
But, having witnessed one collapse, and now witnessing another, the one approach I would definitely not recommend is doing nothing and hoping for the best.


russia-insider--2020-12-15--The USA is Cracking Up Just Like the USSR Did - In Fact, They Are Related

`` And so it would be a grave error to think that , just because communist ideology is idiotic , capitalist ideology is any less so . ''
`` You see , ideology is a product of intellectuals , and intellectuals tend to be idiots , ... We are born equipped with MonkeyBrain 2.0 that can handle abstraction only too well but always fails when attempting to reconcile it with messy physical reality . ''
This article from our archives was first published on RI in November 2017 The author 's original title of this article was better than what @ @ @ @ @ @ @ October Revolution and You' Orlov is one of our favorite essayists on Russia and all sorts of other things .
He moved to the US as a child , and lives in the Boston area .
He is one of the better-known thinkers The New Yorker has dubbed 'The Dystopians ' in an excellent 2009 profile , along with James Howard Kunstler , another regular contributor to RI ( archive ) .
These theorists believe that modern society is headed for a jarring and painful crack-up .
He is best known for his @ @ @ @ @ @ @ ( he thinks America 's will be worse ) .
He is a prolific author on a wide array of subjects , and you can see his work by searching him on Amazon .
He has a large following on the web , and on Patreon , and we urge you to support him there , as Russia Insider does .
His current project is organizing the production of affordable house boats for living on .
He lives on a boat himself .
Today is the 100th anniversary of the Russian Revolution of @ @ @ @ @ @ @ death and destruction , which I won ’ t go into because you can read all about it elsewhere .
It also caused a great outpouring of new art , literature , architecture and culture in general , putting the previously somewhat stodgy Russia securely in the world ’ s avant-garde .
It also resulted in a tremendous surge of industrialization , rapidly transforming a previously mostly agrarian , though gradually industrializing nation into a global industrial powerhouse ( at great human cost ) .
But perhaps most importantly , the revolution destroyed @ @ @ @ @ @ @ privilege based on heredity , class and wealth and replaced them with an egalitarian social model centered on the working class .
And it demonstrated ( as much through propaganda as by actual example ) how this new model was more competitive : while the West wallowed in the Great Depression , the USSR surged ahead both economically and socially .
For all of its many failings , the USSR did serve as a shining city on the hill to the downtrodden millions around the world , including in the USA , fermenting @ @ @ @ @ @ @ one-percent ownership class eventually had to stop and think .
Reluctantly , they decided to stop trying to destroy organized labor movements , introduced state old-age pensions ( misnamed “ Social Security ” ) and declared a euphemistic “ war on poverty.
” And with that a “ middle class ” was created—so called because it was literally in the middle , having risen out of poverty but still safely walled off from the one-percent ownership class .
But as we shall see this effect was temporary .
Eventually the USSR evaporated , @ @ @ @ @ @ @ do .
The reasons for this disappearing act are too numerous to mention , but one of the main ones was that the Soviet political elite turned itself into a much-hated , privileged caste , and then failed to reproduce , turning into a moribund gerontocracy .
When the old cadres finally started dying out , the new generation that came in included plenty of traitors who did their best to destroy the system and grab a piece for themselves .
This effect was plain to see , but was it the root @ @ @ @ @ @ @ , every part of it is touched to one extent or another , and it becomes impossible to say which one played the key role in precipitating the collapse .
With the USSR gone , the owners of the USA had no one to compete against and were no longer under any sort of pressure to maintain the illusion of an equitable and egalitarian society .
Instead , they concentrated on two projects , one ideological , the other economic .
The ideological project involved wrecking what was left of the USSR to @ @ @ @ @ @ @ paint a convincing picture of the horrible consequences of communism or socialism and to herd everyone toward wholeheartedly embracing unfettered capitalism .
The economic project involved eviscerating the American middle class—a process that by now has largely run its course .
Since the creation of the middle class was a multigenerational project , so is its destruction .
But the effects of this process on society are already plain to see : there is an overhang of still relatively well-off retirees while their children and grandchildren have greatly diminished economic and social prospects @ @ @ @ @ @ @ that created the appearance of egalitarianism has been knocked out .
Organized labor is all but finished .
Borders have been thrown open to foreign labor and cheap imports .
Entry into the middle class has been blocked through a variety of measures including the relentless dumbing down of public education , the equally relentless overpricing of higher education , the health care extortion scheme , the rationing of justice based on wealth and privilege , wealth confiscation using a succession of artificial real estate market bubbles and so on .
Overall , @ @ @ @ @ @ @ down to nothing the same way that the Chinese “ coolies ” were dealt with once the railroads had been built : don ’ t feed them much but give them plenty of opium ( now being grown in Afghanistan under the watchful eye of Western troops ) .
To sum it up : if you aren ’ t happy with the way things are going in the US , you have a choice .
You can of course blame Russia—for getting rid of the USSR .
Or you can blame your owners—your @ @ @ @ @ @ @ the King of England appointed the Lords Proprietors .
Within Russia itself the commemoration of the October Revolution is no longer a public holiday .
But there was a sort of commemoration held on the vast Palace Square in St. Petersburg , which I attended with my five-year-old son on my shoulders .
It was his first time in a crowd of 35,000 , and he was duly impressed .
It was a light-and-sound extravaganza consisting of two shows which played in alternation .
On the vast semicircular facade of the General Staff @ @ @ @ @ @ @ the October Revolution that included the reading of historical documents ( such as the abdication of Nicholas II ) and works of poetry .
It ended on an upbeat note—yes , many horrible events took place , but Russia is now reborn—with the General Staff ’ s façade painted in the Russian tricolor .
A different show was presented on the façade of the Winter Palace across the square .
Here , multimedia artists from across Europe ( including France , Italy , Spain and Poland ) used projected light to decorate and @ @ @ @ @ @ @ praises to the beauty of St. Petersburg .
The audience was invited to use their phones to vote for the best one .
After the show , as we filtered out of the Palace Square and walked home along the Palace Embankment , my five-year-old son asked some good questions that he had formulated while watching the show .
“ Did a lot of people die ?
” ( Yes . )
“ But Russia was then and is now ?
” ( Yes , Russia has been around for a 1000 years @ @ @ @ @ @ @ years more . )
“ Why do people have to die ?
” ( Because otherwise we we would be full-up with useless old people and there wouldn ’ t be enough room for young people . )
And then the obvious follow-up : “ Why are we full-up with useless old people anyway ?
” ( ?
?
? )
And finally : “ Why do we bury dead people ?
” ( Because they smell really bad . )
“ Ah… ” A rather unsentimental youth , wouldn ’ t you @ @ @ @ @ @ @ of the thousands of quite similar-minded ones who were in attendance that day , riding on their fathers ’ shoulders or marching along .
Welcome to Russia… One of the reasons why the USSR failed was because the idiocy of the ideology of Soviet communism became too painful to tolerate .
In a sense , this was inevitable .
You see , ideology is a product of intellectuals , and intellectuals tend to be idiots , making “ intellectual idiocy ” something of an oxymoron .
We are born equipped with MonkeyBrain 2.0 @ @ @ @ @ @ @ but always fails when attempting to reconcile it with messy physical reality .
And so it would be a grave error to think that , just because communist ideology is idiotic , capitalist ideology is any less so .
By now most thinking people realize that capitalism has failed just has communism had .
We can only hope that one day the US will do with its capitalist legacy what Russia has done with its communist one : turn it into a festive art installation that both children and adults can enjoy .

"And so it would be a grave error to think that, just because communist ideology is idiotic, capitalist ideology is any less so."
"You see, ideology is a product of intellectuals, and intellectuals tend to be idiots, ... We are born equipped with MonkeyBrain 2.0 that can handle abstraction only too well but always fails when attempting to reconcile it with messy physical reality."
This article from our archives was first published on RI in November 2017
2840b48fed7c6a0e2ef4bc3d4d0921c5.jpg The caption reads: 'Death to World Imperialism"
The author's original title of this article was better than what we could come up with: 'The October Revolution and You'
Orlov is one of our favorite essayists on Russia and all sorts of other things. He moved to the US as a child, and lives in the Boston area.
He is one of the better-known thinkers The New Yorker has dubbed 'The Dystopians' in an excellent 2009 profile, along with James Howard Kunstler, another regular contributor to RI (archive). These theorists believe that modern society is headed for a jarring and painful crack-up.
He is best known for his 2011 book comparing Soviet and American collapse (he thinks America's will be worse). He is a prolific author on a wide array of subjects, and you can see his work by searching him on Amazon.
He has a large following on the web, and on Patreon, and we urge you to support him there, as Russia Insider does.
His current project is organizing the production of affordable house boats for living on. He lives on a boat himself.
Today is the 100th anniversary of the Russian Revolution of 1917. It caused a lot of death and destruction, which I won’t go into because you can read all about it elsewhere. It also caused a great outpouring of new art, literature, architecture and culture in general, putting the previously somewhat stodgy Russia securely in the world’s avant-garde.
It also resulted in a tremendous surge of industrialization, rapidly transforming a previously mostly agrarian, though gradually industrializing nation into a global industrial powerhouse (at great human cost). But perhaps most importantly, the revolution destroyed all of the previously dominant institutions of privilege based on heredity, class and wealth and replaced them with an egalitarian social model centered on the working class.
And it demonstrated (as much through propaganda as by actual example) how this new model was more competitive: while the West wallowed in the Great Depression, the USSR surged ahead both economically and socially.
For all of its many failings, the USSR did serve as a shining city on the hill to the downtrodden millions around the world, including in the USA, fermenting rebellion, so that even there the one-percent ownership class eventually had to stop and think.
Reluctantly, they decided to stop trying to destroy organized labor movements, introduced state old-age pensions (misnamed “Social Security”) and declared a euphemistic “war on poverty.” And with that a “middle class” was created—so called because it was literally in the middle, having risen out of poverty but still safely walled off from the one-percent ownership class. But as we shall see this effect was temporary.
Eventually the USSR evaporated, as artificial, synthetic political entities often do. The reasons for this disappearing act are too numerous to mention, but one of the main ones was that the Soviet political elite turned itself into a much-hated, privileged caste, and then failed to reproduce, turning into a moribund gerontocracy.
When the old cadres finally started dying out, the new generation that came in included plenty of traitors who did their best to destroy the system and grab a piece for themselves. This effect was plain to see, but was it the root cause? When a complex system collapses, every part of it is touched to one extent or another, and it becomes impossible to say which one played the key role in precipitating the collapse.
With the USSR gone, the owners of the USA had no one to compete against and were no longer under any sort of pressure to maintain the illusion of an equitable and egalitarian society. Instead, they concentrated on two projects, one ideological, the other economic.
The ideological project involved wrecking what was left of the USSR to the greatest extent possible in order to paint a convincing picture of the horrible consequences of communism or socialism and to herd everyone toward wholeheartedly embracing unfettered capitalism. The economic project involved eviscerating the American middle class—a process that by now has largely run its course.
Since the creation of the middle class was a multigenerational project, so is its destruction. But the effects of this process on society are already plain to see: there is an overhang of still relatively well-off retirees while their children and grandchildren have greatly diminished economic and social prospects.
Meanwhile, the hastily erected scaffolding that created the appearance of egalitarianism has been knocked out. Organized labor is all but finished. Borders have been thrown open to foreign labor and cheap imports.
Entry into the middle class has been blocked through a variety of measures including the relentless dumbing down of public education, the equally relentless overpricing of higher education, the health care extortion scheme, the rationing of justice based on wealth and privilege, wealth confiscation using a succession of artificial real estate market bubbles and so on.
Overall, the former middle class is being whittled down to nothing the same way that the Chinese “coolies” were dealt with once the railroads had been built: don’t feed them much but give them plenty of opium (now being grown in Afghanistan under the watchful eye of Western troops). To sum it up: if you aren’t happy with the way things are going in the US, you have a choice.
You can of course blame Russia—for getting rid of the USSR. Or you can blame your owners—your one percent—who have owned you ever since the King of England appointed the Lords Proprietors.
Within Russia itself the commemoration of the October Revolution is no longer a public holiday. But there was a sort of commemoration held on the vast Palace Square in St. Petersburg, which I attended with my five-year-old son on my shoulders. It was his first time in a crowd of 35,000, and he was duly impressed. It was a light-and-sound extravaganza consisting of two shows which played in alternation.
On the vast semicircular facade of the General Staff building was broadcast a multimedia retrospective of the October Revolution that included the reading of historical documents (such as the abdication of Nicholas II) and works of poetry. It ended on an upbeat note—yes, many horrible events took place, but Russia is now reborn—with the General Staff’s façade painted in the Russian tricolor.
A different show was presented on the façade of the Winter Palace across the square. Here, multimedia artists from across Europe (including France, Italy, Spain and Poland) used projected light to decorate and transform the palace to music that sung praises to the beauty of St. Petersburg. The audience was invited to use their phones to vote for the best one.
A Russian TV News Report from the Palace Square light show
After the show, as we filtered out of the Palace Square and walked home along the Palace Embankment, my five-year-old son asked some good questions that he had formulated while watching the show. “Did a lot of people die?” (Yes.) “But Russia was then and is now?” (Yes, Russia has been around for a 1000 years and will probably be around for 1000 years more.) “Why do people have to die?” (Because otherwise we we would be full-up with useless old people and there wouldn’t be enough room for young people.) And then the obvious follow-up: “Why are we full-up with useless old people anyway?” (???) And finally: “Why do we bury dead people?” (Because they smell really bad.) “Ah…” A rather unsentimental youth, wouldn’t you say? But he was only one of the thousands of quite similar-minded ones who were in attendance that day, riding on their fathers’ shoulders or marching along. Welcome to Russia…
One of the reasons why the USSR failed was because the idiocy of the ideology of Soviet communism became too painful to tolerate. In a sense, this was inevitable. You see, ideology is a product of intellectuals, and intellectuals tend to be idiots, making “intellectual idiocy” something of an oxymoron. We are born equipped with MonkeyBrain 2.0 that can handle abstraction only too well but always fails when attempting to reconcile it with messy physical reality. And so it would be a grave error to think that, just because communist ideology is idiotic, capitalist ideology is any less so.
By now most thinking people realize that capitalism has failed just has communism had. We can only hope that one day the US will do with its capitalist legacy what Russia has done with its communist one: turn it into a festive art installation that both children and adults can enjoy.
Source: Club Orlov


russia-insider--2020-12-15--6 Amusing Historic Stereotypes of Major Russian Cities

`` Even in modern times , Pskovians have to endure countless jokes about their crudeness , stupidity , and their lack of good manners . ''
This article from our archives was first published on RI in January 2018 About the author : For lovers of Russian culture , folklore , and history , Kotar ’ s work is a treasure .
The grandson of White Russian immigrants , the 34-year-old is an author of epic fantasy novels inspired by Russian fairy tales .
You can see his four books here on Amazon .
He is also a deacon of @ @ @ @ @ @ @ translator , and choir director at the Holy Trinity Monastery in Jordanville , NY , where he lives .
Here is his bio from his blog , where he writes about many aspects of Russia .
We highly recommend following it and subscribing to his email list to get exclusive material .
He has an excellent Pinterest page , and you can follow him on Facebook .
Here is an archive of his work published on Russia Insider .
He is currently running a remarkably successful crowdfunding on Kickstarter to be able to @ @ @ @ @ @ @ him if you can !
Stereotypes are a funny thing .
On the one hand , they ’ re often no more than caricatures .
On the other hand , there ’ s a surprising amount of bitter truth to some of them .
Like the Russians say with their morbid humor , “ In every joke , there ’ s a bit of a joke.
” This is especially interesting when we consider old Rus .
We don ’ t have much to go on , historically speaking , other than chronicles @ @ @ @ @ @ @ of birch bark .
However , Russians have preserved some interesting stereotypes about the inhabitants of old Russian cities .
Whether there ’ s any truth to them or not is almost beside the point .
They ’ re fascinating , revealing a window to a world long gone , yet still persisting in the habits and personalities of today ’ s Russians .
( Here ’ s the original Russian article that I translated ) EVERYONE IN GREAT NOVGOROD IS A REBEL Novgorod ’ s rebelliousness is legendary .
The image of @ @ @ @ @ @ @ card of the city .
The reason this stereotype came about has to do with the old chronicles .
They were filled with illustrations of the constant arguments at the Novgorodian Veche , a kind of popular assembly that met in the central square .
( See my translation of “ Martha the Mayoress ” for a vivid fictionalized example ) .
Of course , there were arguments and even fights during the Veche .
However , they did not constantly devolve into fist-fights , as the legends suggest .
Naturally , the @ @ @ @ @ @ @ bloody examples from history to illustrate their point .
After all , Novgorod was often an opponent of Kiev and , later , Moscow .
But in actual fact , the inhabitants of Great Novgorod were fiercely loyal to their government and loved their city .
Compromise was the order of the day , not broken heads .
Plus , they were more than usually literate .
EVERYONE IN PSKOV IS A THIEF OR A MORON Even in modern times , Pskovians have had to endure countless jokes about their crudeness , stupidity @ @ @ @ @ @ @ .
This may or may not be true .
As for their lack of manners , that is entirely a matter of hats .
The inhabitants of Pskov , no matter what their social standing , hardly ever doffed their cap before anyone ( which is extremely bad form in old Rus ) .
However , this wasn ’ t crudity or bad breeding .
It used to be that a hat symbolized one ’ s personal dignity .
In Pskov in particular , to actually take off your hat meant to be @ @ @ @ @ @ @ of the more generally accepted rule that if someone else took your hat off your head , that was a terrible insult .
EVERYONE IN NIZHNI NOVGOROD IS A DRUNKARD The painful topic of Russian alcoholism became especially relevant in Nizhni Novgorod at the end of the 17th century .
A kind of epidemic of alcoholism rose up , and it was normal to see women as well as men lying in the streets in a drunken stupor .
Foreign travelers recounted after their visits to Nizhni Novgorod that “ Russians don ’ @ @ @ @ @ @ @ course , they did more than feast .
But on holidays , Russians have always allowed themselves some excesses .
It ’ s not entirely fair to single out Nizhni Novgorod , when alcoholism still is the gravest problem facing Russia today , as in olden times .
EVERYONE IN VLADIMIR IS A CRIMINAL This stereotype appeared very early .
It ’ s easy to understand .
Vladimir itself had five prisons , including the famous “ Vladimir Central Prison.
” From the beginning , Vladimirians have been considered con artists who like @ @ @ @ @ @ @ t help that the path to Siberia for exiled convicts went through Vladimir .
It was even called the “ Vladimirka.
” Exiled convicts stopped in Vladimir to have half their heads shaved ( a scene vividly recounted in the excellent Russian film The Siberian Barber ) .
Then they ’ d be branded as exiles or thieves , clapped in irons , and set upon the road to Siberia .
In old times , the path could take as long as two years , and those two years were not counted as @ @ @ @ @ @ @ itself , for all that , was a typical enough provincial town .
EVERYONE IN ROSTOV IS AN ARTISAN When a Russian hears the word “ finift ’ ” ( enameling ) , he immediately thinks of Rostov .
Nothing could change the old stereotype that every inhabitant of ancient Rostov worked in the enameling guild .
That ’ s complete nonsense , of course .
First of all , the best enamellists in old Rus were as a rule in Kiev , the capital city .
There were also some famous artisans @ @ @ @ @ @ @ and Great Novgorod .
The only difference is that Rostov alone has preserved the traditional techniques of enameling since ancient times .
Even today , there is a factory producing enameled work .
Perhaps for this reason alone , tourists still visit Rostov exclusively to see enameled boxes .
The industrious muzhik from Yaroslavl is an image that we even find in Gogol .
From the times of Rus , Yaroslavians were known as people who were never apathetic , lazy , or prone to tiredness .
Instead , they ’ re known @ @ @ @ @ @ @ .
This may have something to do with the odd tradition that Yaroslav is a city of buried treasure .
Apparently , wherever you turn , you see someone uncovering a jewelry box or trying to break into an ancient chest of drawers .
Perhaps a little more seriously , Yaroslavians have long been known as “ chicks of the cuckoo.
” In other words , they ’ re more than usually capable of leaving their homeland without much regret .
This quality has a clear historical origin .
Yaroslav was built on @ @ @ @ @ @ @ by merchants from Scandinavia all the way to the Arab lands .
From the middle of the 16th century , Yarsolavl became the most important center for trade in all of Rus .
This constant movement often inspired young Yaroslavians to try out their luck in foreign lands .
True or not , such stereotypes make for fascinating stories .
For myself , the “ myth ” of the boisterous Novgorodian comes to life in my third novel , The Heart of the World , in a semi-fictionalized setting of the Veche that @ @ @ @ @ @ @

"Even in modern times, Pskovians have to endure countless jokes about their crudeness, stupidity, and their lack of good manners."
This article from our archives was first published on RI in January 2018
About the author: For lovers of Russian culture, folklore, and history, Kotar’s work is a treasure. The grandson of White Russian immigrants, the 34-year-old is an author of epic fantasy novels inspired by Russian fairy tales. You can see his four books here on Amazon.
He is also a deacon of the Russian Orthodox Church, a professional translator, and choir director at the Holy Trinity Monastery in Jordanville, NY, where he lives. Here is his bio from his blog, where he writes about many aspects of Russia. We highly recommend following it and subscribing to his email list to get exclusive material.
He has an excellent Pinterest page, and you can follow him on Facebook. Here is an archive of his work published on Russia Insider.
He is currently running a remarkably successful crowdfunding on Kickstarter to be able to publish his upcoming novels. Please support him if you can!
Stereotypes are a funny thing. On the one hand, they’re often no more than caricatures. On the other hand, there’s a surprising amount of bitter truth to some of them. Like the Russians say with their morbid humor, “In every joke, there’s a bit of a joke.”
This is especially interesting when we consider old Rus. We don’t have much to go on, historically speaking, other than chronicles, treaties, and a few bits of birch bark.
However, Russians have preserved some interesting stereotypes about the inhabitants of old Russian cities. Whether there’s any truth to them or not is almost beside the point. They’re fascinating, revealing a window to a world long gone, yet still persisting in the habits and personalities of today’s Russians. (Here’s the original Russian article that I translated)
EVERYONE IN GREAT NOVGOROD IS A REBEL
Novgorod’s rebelliousness is legendary. The image of a brawling Novgorodian is almost a calling card of the city. The reason this stereotype came about has to do with the old chronicles. They were filled with illustrations of the constant arguments at the Novgorodian Veche, a kind of popular assembly that met in the central square. (See my translation of “Martha the Mayoress” for a vivid fictionalized example).
Of course, there were arguments and even fights during the Veche. However, they did not constantly devolve into fist-fights, as the legends suggest. Naturally, the chroniclers would choose the most vivid and bloody examples from history to illustrate their point. After all, Novgorod was often an opponent of Kiev and, later, Moscow. But in actual fact, the inhabitants of Great Novgorod were fiercely loyal to their government and loved their city. Compromise was the order of the day, not broken heads. Plus, they were more than usually literate.
EVERYONE IN PSKOV IS A THIEF OR A MORON
Even in modern times, Pskovians have had to endure countless jokes about their crudeness, stupidity, and their lack of good manners. This may or may not be true. As for their lack of manners, that is entirely a matter of hats. The inhabitants of Pskov, no matter what their social standing, hardly ever doffed their cap before anyone (which is extremely bad form in old Rus). However, this wasn’t crudity or bad breeding.
It used to be that a hat symbolized one’s personal dignity. In Pskov in particular, to actually take off your hat meant to be shamed. It may be a bastardization of the more generally accepted rule that if someone else took your hat off your head, that was a terrible insult.
EVERYONE IN NIZHNI NOVGOROD IS A DRUNKARD
The painful topic of Russian alcoholism became especially relevant in Nizhni Novgorod at the end of the 17th century. A kind of epidemic of alcoholism rose up, and it was normal to see women as well as men lying in the streets in a drunken stupor. Foreign travelers recounted after their visits to Nizhni Novgorod that “Russians don’t do anything but feast.”
Of course, they did more than feast. But on holidays, Russians have always allowed themselves some excesses. It’s not entirely fair to single out Nizhni Novgorod, when alcoholism still is the gravest problem facing Russia today, as in olden times.
EVERYONE IN VLADIMIR IS A CRIMINAL
This stereotype appeared very early. It’s easy to understand. Vladimir itself had five prisons, including the famous “Vladimir Central Prison.” From the beginning, Vladimirians have been considered con artists who like a dangerous life. It didn’t help that the path to Siberia for exiled convicts went through Vladimir. It was even called the “Vladimirka.”
Exiled convicts stopped in Vladimir to have half their heads shaved (a scene vividly recounted in the excellent Russian film The Siberian Barber). Then they’d be branded as exiles or thieves, clapped in irons, and set upon the road to Siberia. In old times, the path could take as long as two years, and those two years were not counted as part of their allotted time.
Vladimir itself, for all that, was a typical enough provincial town.
EVERYONE IN ROSTOV IS AN ARTISAN
When a Russian hears the word “finift’” (enameling), he immediately thinks of Rostov. Nothing could change the old stereotype that every inhabitant of ancient Rostov worked in the enameling guild. That’s complete nonsense, of course. First of all, the best enamellists in old Rus were as a rule in Kiev, the capital city. There were also some famous artisans in Pskov, Yaroslavl, Kostroma, and Great Novgorod.
The only difference is that Rostov alone has preserved the traditional techniques of enameling since ancient times. Even today, there is a factory producing enameled work. Perhaps for this reason alone, tourists still visit Rostov exclusively to see enameled boxes.
THE INDUSTRIOUS YARSOLAVIAN
The industrious muzhik from Yaroslavl is an image that we even find in Gogol. From the times of Rus, Yaroslavians were known as people who were never apathetic, lazy, or prone to tiredness. Instead, they’re known to be active to a manic degree. This may have something to do with the odd tradition that Yaroslav is a city of buried treasure.
Apparently, wherever you turn, you see someone uncovering a jewelry box or trying to break into an ancient chest of drawers. Perhaps a little more seriously, Yaroslavians have long been known as “chicks of the cuckoo.” In other words, they’re more than usually capable of leaving their homeland without much regret. This quality has a clear historical origin.
Yaroslav was built on the crossroads of ancient roads—a path used by merchants from Scandinavia all the way to the Arab lands. From the middle of the 16th century, Yarsolavl became the most important center for trade in all of Rus. This constant movement often inspired young Yaroslavians to try out their luck in foreign lands.
True or not, such stereotypes make for fascinating stories. For myself, the “myth” of the boisterous Novgorodian comes to life in my third novel, The Heart of the World, in a semi-fictionalized setting of the Veche that goes fabulously wrong for all concerned.
Source: Nicholas Kotar