Urban75 Home About Offline BrixtonBuzz Contact

The 2023 Russian Coup.

tim said:
Does anyone have any idea if Shogu and Gerasimov have their own powerbase within the Russian military? Can they be easily got rid of?
Click to expand...

Difficult to say - Shogu isn't a soldier, he's a civil engineer turned politician who had very little contact with the military into appointed civil defence minister, and then Defence Minister. It's unlikely he has any of the visceral loyalty that Prigozhin commanded (until yesterday), on the other hand he probably has a constituency/powerbase within wider Russian elites because he dishes out so much patronage in terms of corruption.

Gerasimov is a career soldier, joined up in the 70's. thoughtful - but Russian military professional education has never been short on genuine intellectualism - and a reasonably successful operational history, however he's far too removed from X or Y Motor Rifle Division to have any serious personal following.

Both are very much seen as Putin's creatures.
 
I liked this description of Prigozhin from Jeremy Morris

Similarly, it seems we have it all the wrong way around with thinking of Prigozhin as this widely popular populist warlord. Sure, there’s a constituency that would like him as one in a long line of outsider extremists (although he’s consciously playing a part there too). These are, frighteningly, the war supporters – that minority who genuinely believe in a fated and fatal mission. Yesterday though, Prigozhin was little more than a chthonic Karen, driven to shooting down some defenceless aircraft and bleating at two extremely experienced and integrated elite military figures that they were ‘dissing’ him. He was, by the way, armed and in his usual cosplay fatigues, while they, not needing to try to appear something they were not, were in loose military office attire, disarmed, but merely mildly discombobulated and a bit embarrassed. For me this showed that Prigozhin remains that wannabe capo not quite in the mob. He’s carried out a series of murders and the boss smiles at him from time to time, but he’ll never be a made man, let alone sit in the poker game with them. And these, rather non-descript military men knew that, even as he made a theatrical flourish of holding a gun to their heads. Prigozhin is a buttonman and a bagman needed for the emergency stage in the war, but probably no longer. And while he verbalized his Karen complaint to the authorities, because he can’t get through to the boss, he really understood the writing on the wall and quickly acceded to the offer of internal exile. No one will forget he was just a petty crook and hotdog seller, stirring up mustard in his mother’s apartment.
Click to expand...
 
ska invita said:
P

That's a very broad statement.... They have some guns that fire up but Russia has a full air force that can fire from distance. At the moment it's probably not expedient to wipe out the column but id bet it's not that hard
Click to expand...
Apparently they had managed to acquire a Pantsir mobile surface to air missile and artillery system. Not just ‘guns that fire up’. Very capable anti aircraft weaponry.
 
The39thStep said:
Really?
Click to expand...
This brief exchange brings to mind a vaguely remembered remark in a book or article I read many years ago by Ernest Mandel, in which he categorised the post-WW2 carve-up (I think) as basically a deal struck between gangsters. Unless I'm imagining it.
 
RD2003 said:
This brief exchange brings to mind a vaguely remembered remark in a book or article I read many years ago by Ernest Mandel, in which he categorised the post-WW2 carve-up (I think) as basically a deal struck between gangsters. Unless I'm imagining it.
Click to expand...
Certainly had negative repercussions for some of the strongest anti fascist partisan groups on both sides of the carve up
 
Flavour said:
i mean there's no hard evidence he left Moscow but also if he did then of course he'd have kept it a fucking secret and not admitted it, and will never admit. truth of that might not come out ever. but what's the point even? doesn't even really matter whether he did or not.
Click to expand...
Just indicative of the sensationalist hype on Saturday's social media , which of course we all lapped up.
 
RD2003 said:
By no means, but I had in mind Russians still alive today, and events easily within living memory.

And to understand today's Russia, it's necessary to remember that it was the Perestoika and Glasnost years that led directly to it. Some posters don't like me referring to it for some reason, but I was a frequent visitor to Russia 1988-93, and so witnessed the way that the recently emerged, tentative hopes of the majority were quickly dashed. They were perhaps naive hopes, emerging as they did in a population which had been politically muzzled and nullified for seven decades, but they were marshalled and then decimated by thieves, gangsters, charlatans and foreign asset-strippers, and the beleagured population inevitably adopted cynicism and, in the many who believed they'd been sold a lie by the west and the western-friendly generation of politicians and, ahem, entrepreneurs who triumphed in August '91, a poisonous nationalism. A disturbing number of those Russians I got to know, my age and younger (I was mid-late 20s), have been dead for quite some time, either at their own hands, through drink and drugs or else mostly curable illnesses. They are statistics in the drastic decline in life-expectancy set in motion by western-encouraged economic 'shock therapy.' From the elections that immediately followed the Yeltsin coup of October 1993, it was obvious that a Putin-like figure was going to step out of the shadows.

But nobody needs me to tell them any of this-it's all in Adam Curtis's excellent recent BBC series.
Click to expand...

It's good to discuss the background and your experiences are interesting. But it's precisely Putin and his elite cronies and fellow oligarchs that are dragging ordinary Russians down. Putin himself won't be there one day. The effects of his elitist machinations will still linger in Ukraine and in Russia. It's a fucking stupid war of aggression that is thankfully resisted by Ukraine. If Putin is shown up as the criminal enemy of Russia and Russians that he is, then maybe a younger generation can see through him and the ruling class that he is part of.
 
Humberto said:
It's good to discuss the background and your experiences are interesting. But it's precisely Putin and his elite cronies and fellow oligarchs that are dragging ordinary Russians down. Putin himself won't be there one day. The effects of his elitist machinations will still linger in Ukraine and in Russia. It's a fucking stupid war of aggression that is thankfully resisted by Ukraine. If Putin is shown up as the criminal enemy of Russia and Russians that he is, then maybe a younger generation can see through him and the ruling class that he is part of.
Click to expand...
People inside and outside Russia have been placing their hopes in the younger Russian generation for decades. There seems to be little or no evidence that political attitudes among the young in Russia are significantly different from their elders. Most racist attacks in Russia (relatively rare in the SU and immediately afterwards) are, for example, carried out by the young, just like anywhere else. There also seems to be a similar divide between the well-educated, affluent young and the rest, and a massive layer of (cough) lumpen youth, understandably cynical and prey, in the absence of any left politics and where liberals are identified with the Yeltsin-era elite, to the most reactionary forces (again similar to anywhere else, but it's the size of this pool of people in Russia that's alarming.) Having said that, the well-educated kids of oligarchs, and 'New Russians' generally, often appear to be among Putin's most enthusiastic supporters. Where opposition currently surfaces it seems to be the input of veterans of the late Soviet era who fancied themselves as dissidents (often while ploughing their own comfortable furrow, and hardly sticking their necks out in Solzhenitsyn fashion) which is most decisive. Add to the mix that Russia has always been incurably corrupt, and you'll find that there are, at first glance unlikely, links between figures in this scattered and disorientated opposition and the oligarchs/regime figures they ostensibly oppose...

Putin, as we are currently seeing, is not a capitalist version of Stalin, and all-powerful. Russia had been 'dragged down' some years before most Russians had heard of him. He was handpicked by the Yeltsin 'family' (echoes of the Sopranos again...) to bring order to the chaos they had created by encouraging and creaming off their fortunes from 'Wild East' capitalism. Not to dismantle it, but to mediate. His hold on power largely depends on the success he has enjoyed in this role so far, but they, along with everybody else, east and west, seem not to have anticipated the depth of his personal ambitions, nor that he would, as it appears, come to adopt a sense of mission based on centuries-old mystical Russian nationalism. He obviously won't be there forever, but his death/retirement/imprisonment won't necessarily change anything. It could feasibly get worse.

Ukraine was a little version of Russia, burdened by all the same problems. Now they have to tackle corruption if only to curry favour with their EU sponsors. In doing so they have to go against the grain of centuries of doing things a certain way. As in Russia, corruption is what keeps the economy and society functioning. And in this they have more in common with the rest of the world than they do with us.
 
Last edited:
RD2003 said:
People inside and outside Russia have been placing their hopes in the younger Russian generation for decades. There seems to be little or no evidence that political attitudes among the young in Russia are significantly different from their elders. Most racist attacks in Russia (relatively rare in the SU and immediately afterwards) are, for example, carried out by the young, just like anywhere else. There also seems to be a similar divide between the well-educated, affluent young and the rest, and a massive layer of (cough) lumpen youth, understandably cynical and prey, in the absence of any left politics and where liberals are identified with the Yeltsin-era elite, to the most reactionary forces (again similar to anywhere else, but it's the size of this pool of people in Russia that's alarming.) Having said that, the well-educated kids of oligarchs, and 'New Russians' generally, often appear to be among Putin's most enthusiastic supporters. Where opposition currently surfaces it seems to be the input of veterans of the late Soviet era who fancied themselves as dissidents (often while ploughing their own comfortable furrow, and hardly sticking their necks out in Solzhenitsyn fashion) which is most decisive. Add to the mix that Russia has always been incurably corrupt, and you'll find that there are, at first glance unlikely, links between figures in this scattered and disorientated opposition and the oligarchs/regime figures they ostensibly oppose...

Putin, as we are currently seeing, is not a capitalist version of Stalin, and all-powerful. Russia had been 'dragged down' some years before most Russians had heard of him. He was handpicked by the Yeltsin 'family' (echoes of the Sopranos again...) to bring order to the chaos they had created by encouraging and creaming off their fortunes from 'Wild East' capitalism. Not to dismantle it, but to mediate. His hold on power largely depends on the success he has enjoyed in this role so far, but they, along with everybody else, east and west, seem not to have anticipated the depth of his personal ambitions, nor that he would, as it appears, come to adopt a sense of mission based on centuries-old mystical Russian nationalism. He obviously won't be there forever, but his death/retirement/imprisonment won't necessarily change anything. It could feasibly get worse.

Ukraine was a little version of Russia, burdened by all the same problems. Now they have to tackle corruption if only to curry favour with their EU sponsors. In doing so they have to go against the grain of centuries of doing things a certain way. As in Russia, corruption is what keeps the economy and society functioning. And in this they have more in common with the rest of the world than they do with us.
Click to expand...

Same old patronising shit apologists for Franco used to give about the possibility of change in Spain.
 
For anybody wanting to understand contemporary Russian society and its dark underbelly, I'd say Emmanuel Carrere's sort-of biography of the late 'National Bolshevik' Edward Limonov is a good place to start.
 
RD2003 said:
By no means, but I had in mind Russians still alive today, and events easily within living memory.

And to understand today's Russia, it's necessary to remember that it was the Perestoika and Glasnost years that led directly to it. Some posters don't like me referring to it for some reason, but I was a frequent visitor to Russia 1988-93, and so witnessed the way that the recently emerged, tentative hopes of the majority were quickly dashed. They were perhaps naive hopes, emerging as they did in a population which had been politically muzzled and nullified for seven decades, but they were marshalled and then decimated by thieves, gangsters, charlatans and foreign asset-strippers, and the beleagured population inevitably adopted cynicism and, in the many who believed they'd been sold a lie by the west and the western-friendly generation of politicians and, ahem, entrepreneurs who triumphed in August '91, a poisonous nationalism. A disturbing number of those Russians I got to know, my age and younger (I was mid-late 20s), have been dead for quite some time, either at their own hands, through drink and drugs or else mostly curable illnesses. They are statistics in the drastic decline in life-expectancy set in motion by western-encouraged economic 'shock therapy.' From the elections that immediately followed the Yeltsin coup of October 1993, it was obvious that a Putin-like figure was going to step out of the shadows.

But nobody needs me to tell them any of this-it's all in Adam Curtis's excellent recent BBC series.
Click to expand...
It was a rhetorical question 😉
 
Probably time to close this thread and just go back to using the main one. Should stop stuff getting double posted.
 
  • Like
Reactions: tim
Bingoman said:
Sounds like he might falling out 9f a window soon?
Click to expand...
I thought this but didn’t realise he’s actually a billionaire. Is that true? If so he can live pretty much protected anywhere in the world that sanctions don’t prevent. He could basically defect if his money is secure and he fears for his life.
 
Magnus McGinty said:
I thought this but didn’t realise he’s actually a billionaire. Is that true? If so he can live pretty much protected anywhere in the world that sanctions don’t prevent. He could basically defect if his money is secure and he fears for his life.
Click to expand...
Presuming they'll let him leave. I have a feeling he'll be ok...
 
Just thinking back, another thing that was interesting about 1988-93 Russia (Moscow mainly for me) was being able to observe the types who began crawling out of the woodwork. It was also fascinating to see some people you knew, at least to the level you could know them as an outsider, begin to transform themselves before your eyes. You had to be psychologically hard to survive from day to day, let alone thrive, in those days. Some of those I 'knew' who were tough enough, in common with some who were not, succumbed to the reaper not too far along the line.

Maybe you had to be an outsider, in that kind of society at that particular time, to understand what the much-maligned Roger Waters was getting at when he wrote about the mentality that assumes that 'everyone's expendable, and no-one has a real friend.'

It could be unnerving, and as I said above, those years shaped the Russia we see today.
 
Last edited:
You must log in or register to reply here.

Similar threads

Dogsauce
The Russian defenestration thread
2
Replies
51
Views
5K
maomao
maomao
steveseagull
The Russian Aviation Industry
2 3
Replies
76
Views
4K
likesfish
likesfish
gosub
Russian Victory Day!
2 3
Replies
74
Views
4K
Idris2002
Idris2002
platinumsage
Russian inforwars
2 3 4 5 6
Replies
155
Views
9K
Dogsauce
Dogsauce
frogwoman
Russian anti war movement
8 9 10 11 12
Replies
333
Views
21K
Yossarian
Yossarian
Back
Top Bottom