I get the sense of a wider and fundamental policy objective to impose a (self-serving ) ideology on Russian life. You are picking up on selected aspects (as I did). However, I read Julian Waller’s research piece on the Russian education system. This introduces top down reforms in the education system, from infant school to university. This includes re-writing world history consistent with the Leaders view point and consistent with his aims. This I find particularly infuriating as it is about the systematic mind forming of young people to corrupt their values and knowledge base. These being the fundamental starting blocks of one’s personal framework, moral, political and informed. So my Russian counter parts neither get the opportunity to read Orwell or Darwin or understand WW2 properly for example. Cynical manipulation. Will it take? I have some doubts and that gives me hope.
Thanks for another insightful - and beautifully written (writing while traveling seems not to have diminished your prowess) - post. Your discussion of the Prigozhin/Wildberries similarities in concert with the Levada survey data presented ideas I've not seen expressed anywhere else. Three insights in particular stand out:
* [T]the system could not provide a way of resolving the dispute peacefully. In a rule-of-law environment, or even in a reasonably well-institutionalized authoritarian system, courts and the bureaucracy should have been able to sort these kinds of things out."
**"When the relationship between your material welfare and the welfare of the country as a whole is unstructured and fundamentally unpredictable, moments of chaos and confusion cause all of these concepts to collapse in on one another."
***[T]he system is doing nothing to help people through all of this confusion. Institutions are not helping people resolve conflicts and protect their interests, with catastrophic and often violent results, as we see in Wildberries. And ideology, rather than telling people how to behave in uncertain times, is manifesting itself predominantly in wild and impotent flights of fancy."
I feel as though I should print these and post them on my refrigerator! It strikes me that we in America are evincing a good bit of undermining of the rule of law, intentional sowing of confusion, and increasingly unserious policy solutions ourselves!
I get the sense of a wider and fundamental policy objective to impose a (self-serving ) ideology on Russian life. You are picking up on selected aspects (as I did). However, I read Julian Waller’s research piece on the Russian education system. This introduces top down reforms in the education system, from infant school to university. This includes re-writing world history consistent with the Leaders view point and consistent with his aims. This I find particularly infuriating as it is about the systematic mind forming of young people to corrupt their values and knowledge base. These being the fundamental starting blocks of one’s personal framework, moral, political and informed. So my Russian counter parts neither get the opportunity to read Orwell or Darwin or understand WW2 properly for example. Cynical manipulation. Will it take? I have some doubts and that gives me hope.
Thanks for another insightful - and beautifully written (writing while traveling seems not to have diminished your prowess) - post. Your discussion of the Prigozhin/Wildberries similarities in concert with the Levada survey data presented ideas I've not seen expressed anywhere else. Three insights in particular stand out:
* [T]the system could not provide a way of resolving the dispute peacefully. In a rule-of-law environment, or even in a reasonably well-institutionalized authoritarian system, courts and the bureaucracy should have been able to sort these kinds of things out."
**"When the relationship between your material welfare and the welfare of the country as a whole is unstructured and fundamentally unpredictable, moments of chaos and confusion cause all of these concepts to collapse in on one another."
***[T]he system is doing nothing to help people through all of this confusion. Institutions are not helping people resolve conflicts and protect their interests, with catastrophic and often violent results, as we see in Wildberries. And ideology, rather than telling people how to behave in uncertain times, is manifesting itself predominantly in wild and impotent flights of fancy."
I feel as though I should print these and post them on my refrigerator! It strikes me that we in America are evincing a good bit of undermining of the rule of law, intentional sowing of confusion, and increasingly unserious policy solutions ourselves!