(Une version française suit en dessous)
Deja vu – I’ve seen it before.
I worked on and off in the Soviet Union during the 1970’s and
1980’s and I watched the crash of the Soviet Empire – from
inside.
There were three main causes of the crash: the loss of value of
the ruble, the loss of the war in Afghanistan and the loss of
confidence of the people.
The value of the ruble fell because the economy was overmilitarized.
Those who had money had to import their television
sets and good clothes from Western Europe because all of the
good electronics went to the military and you could not buy a
good television made in Russia. Similarly all of the leather went
into military boots and the shoes available to Russian consumers
were made of cardboard. I couldn’t outfit a lab with good
electronics, while a friend was able to equip his lab because “I
have friends in the military.”
The war in Afghanistan was lost, well for the same reasons that
the British lost in Afghanistan in the 19th Century and the United
States lost in the 21st Century.
And the people’s confidence was lost because the Russian
government tried unsuccessfully to control information. Russians
used to tell me “you can find the truth anywhere but in Pravda
and the news anywhere except in Izvestia” (Pravda, one of the
two main Russian newspapers at the time, means truth in
Russian, Izvestia, the other one, means news.) Realizing that
these newspapers were heavily censored, people listened to the
clandestine broadcasts of Radio Free Europe controlled by the
American culture of war.
Putin is repeating history.
The war against Ukraine has cut off a failing Russian economy
from all trade with the West and the ruble is crashing.
The war in Ukraine will bog down the Russian military as it was
bogged down in Afghanistan. It is not a winnable war.
And now the Russian government is trying to control information
and once again, this is bound to fail. Media that dare to challenge
the war in the Ukraine are labeled as foreign agents. And
the official announcement of censorship is patently ridiculous;
prohibiting “information about the shelling of Ukrainian cities and
the death of civilians in Ukraine as a result of the actions of the
Russian Army, as well as content in which the ongoing operation
is called an attack, invasion or a declaration of war.”
Tens of thousands of Russians are protesting the war and their
voices cannot be silenced. We have recently published on CPNN
thousands of signatures on anti-war petitions by
Russian scientists, by Russian cultural figures, and by other
Russian activists. (As of March 4 this list is expanded to
include IT workers, teachers, the directors of LUKOIL, the largest
private company in Russia, mathematicians and chess
champions.)
Putin’s days are numbered with a crashing economy, an
unwinnable war and the loss of confidence of the Russian
people.
I continue to believe that the American empire will crash soon
because of its over-militarization of the economy and the entire
American culture. But it seems that Putin’s rule in Russia will
crash even sooner.
The day of reckoning of the culture of war is arriving.
* * * * *
LA CHUTE DE POUTINE – UN DÉJÀ-VU
J’ai travaillé par intermittence en Union soviétique dans les
années 1970 et 1980 et j’ai observé le crash de l’Empire
soviétique – de l’intérieur.
Il y avait trois causes principales du crash : la perte de valeur du
rouble, la perte de la guerre en Afghanistan et la perte de
confiance du peuple.
La valeur du rouble a chuté parce que l’économie était trop
militarisée. Ceux qui avaient de l’argent devaient importer leurs
téléviseurs et leurs bons vêtements d’Europe occidentale parce
que tous les bons appareils électroniques allaient à l’armée et
qu’on ne pouvait pas acheter un bon téléviseur fabriqué en
Russie. De même, tout le cuir est entré dans les bottes militaires
et les chaussures disponibles pour les consommateurs russes
étaient en carton. Je ne pouvais pas équiper un labo avec une
bonne électronique, alors qu’un ami a pu équiper son labo parce
que “j’ai des amis dans l’armée”.
La guerre en Afghanistan a été perdue, bien pour les mêmes
raisons que les Britanniques ont perdues en Afghanistan au 19e
siècle et que les États-Unis ont perdues au 21e siècle.
Et la confiance du peuple a été perdue parce que le
gouvernement a essayé sans succès de contrôler l’information.
Les Russes me disaient “vous pouvez trouver la vérité partout
sauf dans la Pravda et les nouvelles partout sauf dans l’Izvestia”
(Pravda, l’un des deux principaux journaux russes de l’époque,
signifie vérité en russe; Izvestia, l’autre, signifie nouvelles .)
Réalisant que ces journaux étaient fortement censurés, les gens
ont écouté les émissions clandestines de Radio Free Europe
contrôlées par la culture de guerre américaine.
Poutine répète l’histoire.
La guerre contre l’Ukraine a coupé une économie russe
défaillante de tout commerce avec l’Occident et le rouble
s’effondre.
La guerre en Ukraine va enliser l’armée russe comme elle
s’enlisait en Afghanistan. Ce n’est pas une guerre gagnable.
Et maintenant, le gouvernement russe essaie de contrôler
l’information et encore une fois, cela est voué à l’échec. Les
médias qui osent contester la guerre en Ukraine sont qualifiés
d’agents étrangers. Et l’annonce officielle de la censure est
manifestement ridicule ; interdisant “les informations sur le
bombardement de villes ukrainiennes et la mort de civils en
Ukraine à la suite des actions de l’armée russe, ainsi que les
contenus dans lesquels l’opération en cours est qualifiée
d’attaque, d’invasion ou de déclaration de guerre”.
Des dizaines de milliers de Russes protestent contre la guerre
et leurs voix ne peuvent être réduites au silence. Nous avons
récemment publié sur CPNN des milliers de signatures sur des
pétitions anti-guerre par des
scientifiques russes, par des artistes russes , et par
d’autres militants russes. (Depuis le 4 mars, cette liste est élargie
pour inclure des informaticiens, des enseignants, les directeurs
de LUKOIL, la plus grande entreprise privée de Russie,
des mathématiciens et des champions d’échecs.)
Les jours de Poutine sont comptés avec une économie qui
s’effondre, une guerre impossible à gagner et la perte de
confiance du peuple russe.
Je continue de croire que l’empire américain s’effondrera bientôt
à cause de sa sur-militarisation de l’économie et de toute la
culture américaine. Mais il semble que le règne de Poutine en
Russie s’effondrera encore plus vite.
La crise de la culture de guerre arrive.
• blog coordinator on March 5, 2022 at 2:46 am said:
“With every day of the war, one can see more and more
clearly how Russia is approaching catastrophe.” Here is a
clear, detailed and authoritative view from inside Russia. It
was written on March 4 by Sergei Vladimirovich
Aleksashenko, a Russian economist and former
government official. He was the deputy finance minister
and first deputy chairman of the board of the Central Bank
of Russia from 1995 to 1998. For details, see his blog.
• Hedwin on March 5, 2022 at 8:32 am said:
Fascinating take on the causes of the impending
catastrophe in Russia. A few thoughts: In my humble
opinion, the original fall of the Soviet Union had another
serious cause: the failure of leaders to think like Marxists,
who didn’t have it all right but did get how the
infrastructure (economy, means of production and
distribution, sources of wealth) affects the superstructure
(political organization, cultural and spiritual choices, etc.).
Gorbachev thought that freeing the political will of the
people would save the union. But he was wrong: the people
needed economic freedom: the ability to make decisions
locally and in the best interest of the people not the
apparatchik. I saw evidence that I am not wrong when I
spent time in the USSR in the 1980s.
• blog coordinator on March 5, 2022 at 8:33 am said:
Yes, you are right. At the end of his life, Lenin denounced
the “war communism” of centralized control and called for
a state that would be “a cooperative of cooperatives.” But
it was too late. The war communists Trotsky and then
Stalin took control. And the Soviet Union never recovered.
The German attack of World War II didn’t help, nor the
American threat after the war. Under Gorbachev there were attempts for democracy insome of the major factories, but the workers were not
educated and they didn’t know how to vote for a proper
management. Economic democracy can only work through
effective education and that takes a lot of time and
investment. Of course in capitalist countries economic
democracy is not even discussed, let alone implemented.