Putin is, apparently, a student of history who has learned one lesson: “Russia will be saved not by pity but by cruelty.” I wouldn’t want to be in Yevgeny Prigozhin’s shoes right now, because Putin is probably planning to go all Peter the Great on him.
Russian leaders have always fashioned themselves as hideously cruel demi-gods, none more so than Putin’s hero Tsar Peter the Great, who went mano-a-mano with his own Prigozhin and an ersatz 17th century Wagner Group known as the Streltsy, a cadre of some 50,000 powerful soldier-tradesmen skilled in murder, embezzlement, and racketeering.
Although the Streltsy were sworn to protect the government, all the legitimized raping and pillaging made it difficult for them to decide who was in charge. Historian Robert Massie described them as “a kind of collective dumb animal, never quite sure who was its proper master, but ready to rush and bite anyone who challenged its own privileged position.”
And like Wagner Group’s 25,000-50,000 Kremlin-sponsored mercenary soldiers, the Streltsy, whose chief concern was also making money, made the doomed move to knock off their boss. Peter tortured thousands of them and their wives and children to death, with the Streltsy’s Prigozhin, Major Karpakov, strapped to a spit and twirled over a fire.
Peter sent his personal physician Dr. Carbonari to ensure Karpakov was slow-roasted. Let my notes from the historians in Russia’s state archive describe what happened next: “Karpakov was removed from the spit to rest before going back on the fire…Carbonari accidentally left his knife in the cell…Karparkov could no longer take the torture…Used the knife to slit his throat…But he was too weak and failed…Carbonari discovered him and he was returned to torture.”
But Putin allowed Prigozhin and the Wagner Group to peacefully retire to Belarus, you might say. I suspect that one reason for that is that it will give Putin an excuse to annex Belarus next. If his army can survive Ukraine, that is.
Well, I might not say that. If I was up on the latest news that Prigozhin is back in Russia.
Wagner boss Prigozhin has returned to Russia, Lukashenko says
I admit it. I have no idea what’s going on in Russia.
Just read some speculations on a German news site (https://www.fr.de/politik/wagner-prigoschin-aufstand-putin-russland-ukraine-krieg-news-belarus-front-propaganda-92385335.html) that the whole revolt was only theatre designed to make Putin look good and allow Wagner to secretly prepare an attack on Ukraine from Belarus.
Doesn’t make sense to me, I don’t see how the whole disaster could make Putin look good and what’s secret about parts of Wagner officially moving to Belarus?
On the other hand the whole damn war doesn’t make sense.
I have no doubt Prigozhin is a dead man walking.
The Russians have pushed people out of the window for far less than what he did by many orders of magnitude.
That may in fact, have been why he took his drive towards Moscow with his army. The Russian government was going to abolish Wagner in Russia and Prigozhin may have already been on a list of, “to fall out of window” so he didn’t have much to lose.
In a place like Russia, when you lose a power struggle, you lose your life as well. Ask Trotsky how that worked out for him.
Most of the time we have no idea why one corporate official or human rights advocate was killed. There is a lot of speculation that it is for no particular reason.
The
KGBFSB just publicly kills a few people here and there to keep everyone else intimidated and afraid.Russia is a state ruled by fear and so far it is working.
As I recall from Massie’s bio of Peter, even he got ahead by playing good-cop/bad-cop.
Sorting out a coup attempt involving thousands required a large spread of torture tents all across the palace yard. As a very hands-on type of leader, Peter did his part, and organized things so that torturers and torturees alike took regular breaks. During one such interval, he complimented one of his victims on their strength and stoicism against the worst he and his henchpersons could wreak, and the torturee admitted that the streltsy had prepared by torturing each other before making their move.
Peter may have learned more from that little convo than from any other single “enhanced interrogation” – but, Massie observed, he was doubtless just as glad the “enlightened” friends he’d made on his first grand tour of western Europe didn’t see how he regained/maintained his power when he came home.
Ruling Russia has always been easy. As easy as juggling a dozen flaming chainsaws, while being engaged in a judo tournament.
One has to juggle a few dozen competing factions, keeping all off balance against one another and oneself, while still guiding the just supercritical mass around without it exploding.
And one slip of the screwdriver can then make things get exceptionally and lethally interesting.
Yeah, ruling Russia’s like tickling the dragon 24/7.
Sitting on an active fireant mound sound far more fun, while biting into an active hive of killer bees.
Who the hell wants to rule Russia? You have to be really greedy, and devoid of empathy to want it.
Even Stalin got screwed in the end, when the doctors were kept away from his datja until it was too late to do something about his stroke.
Check “Circassian genocide” at wikipedia if you think Russia got any better after Peter the Great.
@mordred #3
I also do not believe for a fracking second this was staged by Putin. What would he have to gain from such a Kabuki? I think Prigoshin became too cocky after he let off tirades against Rusian military leaderhip for shitty logistics, lack of morale and general incompetence on his Telegram channel. After a couple of weeks without serious consequences for him he though he’ll take on the Head Honcho himself. I see a particualr gruesome end for him in the near future. Especially now that Putin the Great said publicly that he was financing Wagner all along. So this limits the usefulness of the Wagner shenanigans for the future, as the whole point of it’s existence was plausible deniability of official Russian involments in whatever kerfuffle (Syria, Mali etc.) they were involved in.
Putin has two kinds of adversaries: opponets and enemies. the opponents will be dealt with swiftly whenever necessary without passion (car accidents, deadly “robberies”, open windows). No hard feelins, it’s just business and it was your time.
The enemies are another matter. Tha’s personal for him and those people will suffer. See tea-time for Litvinenko, and some nasty organo-phosphate acetylcholine-esterase inhibitors for Navalny, Kivelidi and Skripal. He still can pretend “It wasn’t me! Not fair!” while at the same time everybody knows where that came from and the people get the message. You can run, but you can’t hide.
Prigoshin should be on the “enemy” list, so let’s see what Vlad can come up with for him.
Didn’t Peter have his ass royally handed to him by Charles XII of Sweden?
I recall a military history describing it as “the tiny lion versus the enormous mouse.”
Sitting on an active fireant mound NEAR A WINDOWsound far more fun, while biting into an active hive of killer bees.
Fixed it for you.
If Putin wants to mimic Stalin and purge the majority of his generals and semi-competent mercenaries, fine by me. Prigozhin’s failure, collapse, or however you want to describe it, was a good thing. He might actually have had the wherewithal to win in Ukraine, had he enacted a full coup d’etat and taken over. Now, there’s scant chance of Russia winning, and a full collapse from within is possible.
You can rule by fear, but you can’t lead by fear. Leadership means giving authority and autonomy to others and risking the occasional bad decision. A dictator always holds the reins, no matter how far away the strap goes. When the only one allowed to make decisions is the one furthest removed from the reality of the situation, it’s easy for things to go wrong.
Marcus @10: The Swedes had some early successes, but Peter prevailed, basically dismantling the Swedish Empire and establishing Russia as the dominant power in the Baltic region.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Great_Northern_War
The link to The Daily Beast is borked because the r in “href” is missing.
Even Churchill, who was not without some knowledge of European history, noted that Russia is ‘a riddle wrapped in a mystery inside an enigma’.
I’m fairly certain that most Western leaders — and most Western ‘intelligence’ services — have no better insight into it than Churchill did, and probably much less.
I’m fairly certain that you’re wrong, nomaduk.
(Also, Churchill referred to the Soviet Union of yore, not to the Russian Federation of today. Different entities)
Russia? Really?
Trying to understand “Russia” by what its rulers do/say/are is like trying to understand America through the lens of Boston politics. This is what so confused Churchill and other mid-twentieth-century leaders about the Soviet Union; and confused Britain and France about “Russia” in the nineteenth century: More so than anywhere else in Europe, the rulers of Russia are so distinct from both the middle layers and the great unwashed that undersanding one set gives no insight whatsoever into the others.
Heh, the subject of Russia, if asked of someone from the Russia Desk at the CIA would get one’s ear seriously bent. First, the nation is beyond immense, as in 11 time zones, 10 major ethnic groups with a total of 190 recognized, 21 national republics, 4 autonomous okrugs, 1 autonomous oblast and just to complicate things, 83 recognized federal subjects. Social mobility is rather rigid, one isn’t going to rise to run for president if one is a farmer or factory worker, as a pair of examples.
Ethnicity is of importance as well, with specific regions primarily being one ethnic group.
Suffice it to say, it’s… complicated. And we thought just working with 50 states was complicated!
Of course, the UK is complicated as well. First, three countries on a single island of Great Britain, Scotland, Wales and England (mix those up at your grave peril). Then, add in regions…
Of course, the US confuses many Europeans, with federal and state alone being of confusion, as most European nations have strong central governments and weak regional governments. Easier to explain quickly, via round cow simplification, 50 nations under a federal constitution…
One thing to figuring out what Russia is intending and planning is, for many major operations, there can be up to a half dozen or more goals nested within the entire thing. There is little to no, “we just this one thing”, they plan a wee bit bigger and typically, in 5 year plan basis longevity and longer. Everything isn’t checkers, it’s 3 and 4D chess.
That doesn’t mean they’re supermen or anything, just that multiple reasons for an action are likely present and of high importance, so countering actions requires understanding most or all of those reasons. That requires understanding the cultures involved, which also means understanding the history rather well, ethnicities, ethnic conflicts, etc.
Well, maybe a little supermen, they did move 1300 factories, many bricks and all over the Urals to keep them away from the invading Germans in WWII.
I’m only fair to middling at it. Just good enough to know to ask, “OK, just what am I missing here, something is missing in this picture”.
wzrd1, let’s not get into https://www.molfar.global/en-blog/catalog-of-russian-pmcs
@wzrd1
Oh please, not this 5D chess stuff again. There is no master plan, Russian strategy is purely opportunistic – let’s try 10000 different things and follow that one that work, let’s improvise, let’s create ad hoc fixes. People are overthinking the whole thing.
(It’s especially funny to me because “Westerners’ logical brains melting trying to make sense of our Slavic chaos” is actually a comedy trope here in Eastern Europe)
Prigozhin was getting paid to deliver successes for the purpose of internal propaganda (like capturing Bakhmut). But after a long feud with Ministry of Defense, a rival gang, Wagner was supposed to be fully integrated into army beginning in July. That would end Prigozhin’s current racket. So he decided to start a new one – force Putin to pay for protection (“Nice Moscow you have here, it would be pity if it got sacked”). Didn’t work out the way he planned and now they both lost.
A good reality check is reading Russian sources in Russian. If you don’t speak the language, then the next best thing is reading people who follow their media, such as https://eastsplaining.substack.com/p/prigozhins-putsch.
@4. raven : “Russia is a state ruled by fear and so far it is working.”
Is it tho’?
Working for who and how well?
I’m nothing even remotely appraoching an expert here but looks to me like :
Putin has been weakened by this rebellion and by his catastrophic decision to launch a land war in Asia.
Prigozhin is a dead man possibly still walking and hiding somewhere.
Russia is economically isolated and shunned by thye world and basially a failed Superpower that is doing the world and itself enormous harm and suffering.
Ordinary Russianas as usual are miserable, being used a scannon fodder, suffering greatly and those that can are fleeing the country..
Stevor, wanna see ordinary Russians? Check out 1420 on YouTube. Plenty of videos since the war began. There’s this concept of the depolitisised blob in the middle, as Vlad Vexler puts it, which is evident. There’s a demographic split between younger and older Russians, which is again evident.
You’re going by a vibe that’s basically propaganda. Life goes on there, that’s not where the fighting is.
@16. John Morales : “Also, Churchill referred to the Soviet Union of yore, not to the Russian Federation of today. Different entities.”
Indeed vs what’s noted very nicely by #18. wzrd1 :
Now recall that back in the Soviet era the then USSR included whole separate nations of very different and now even warring cases including Armenia, Azerbaijan, Georgia, Ukraine, Kazakhstan, Lithuania, Uzbekistan, Estonia, Belarus, Moldova, et cetera.. How much more complicated and messy then vs now.. which is still really complex and murky and to ignorant outsiders like me puzzling as F.
@8. birgerjohansson : “Check “Circassian genocide” at wikipedia if you think Russia got any better after Peter the Great.”
Um, one word – Stalinism.
But yes :
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Circassian_genocide
@22. John Morales : “You’re going by a vibe that’s basically propaganda. Life goes on there, that’s not where the fighting is.”
No, but many of them have or will have lost people fighting in Ukraine.
Also Prigozhin’s rebellion & Ukraine has mad esome attacks inside Russia too.
@22. John Morales : “You’re going by a vibe that’s basically propaganda. Life goes on there, that’s not where the fighting is.”
No, but many of them have or will have lost people fighting in Ukraine.
Also Prigozhin’s rebellion & Ukraine has mad esome attacks inside Russia too.
StevoR, you’re not processing properly.
Ordinary Russians:
I have no idea why they’re building a fence, it’s almost as if they don’t want another war in the winter, a Winter War II or something.
Which is another precedent for why Ukraine still stands a chance. If the Finns could do it, the Ukrainians can do it.
I am curious though, why did Putin pose without a shirt on a horse a while back? Joe Stalin never had to.
Because Russia is not the Soviet Union, wzrd1.
Dóh! Apologies for the double post 24-25 above.
@ ^ John Morales : No – but Putin began life asa KGB agent so.. mindset & history and legacy there..
@26. John Morales : “”StevoR, you’re not processing properly.”
Possibly.
Thanks for the clip and extra perspective here.
“Ordinary Russians:”
Hmm.. are they tho’?
You’ve accused me of falling for Western propaganda here. I’ve been follwoing mainly Western news sources so I guess that’s possible. OTOH, there is also the issue of Rusian and pro-Putin propagandas being pushed by some which make sit ahrd to feel confident and really know what’s happening from their side. The Russian vs Western accounts of the sinking of the Moskva warship (remember that folks?) :
https://freethoughtblogs.com/pharyngula/?s=Moskva :
Being just one of many examples. Generally it seems like the Western / Ukrainian side is a probably somewhat more honest and transparent and accurate than the Russian one although maybe that is just my bias from my perspective and place in the world? I’ve already noted I’m not an expert and know that I am ignorant of a lot here. Which also make s it hard to know quite who to believe.
One thing that is clear is that many Russians feel constrained about telling the truth :
Source : https://newrepublic.com/article/172018/daniil-orain-russian-youtuber-muscovites-interviews
It iois also clear that internal dissent is brutally crushed and that Putin’s regime is extremely repressive aand that, yeah, a lot of Russians who can have fled the country :
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Russian_emigration_following_the_Russian_invasion_of_Ukraine
Which certainly is never a good sign for the state of the place people flee from is it?
I expect a lot of people in Russsia know of many others who have fled the country, died in Ukraine or who have suffered at under the Putin regimes and know they can’t talk openly about political things or the war.
Arrrgh. Italics fail, guess y’all can see where..
FWIW. There’s also this :
https://www.themoscowtimes.com/2019/03/20/russia-drops-further-in-world-happiness-index-un-a64885
As well as this :
https://www.statista.com/statistics/1092577/happiness-index-russia/#:~:text=In%20Russia%2C%20In%202021%2C%2041,happy%20and%2013%20percent%20unhappy.
Plus of course :
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/books/NBK233387/
Albeit Australia also has a (at least somewhat deserved) reputation for drunkenness and drinking culture here too. Drinking often being a coping mechanism for misery..
StevoR,
Yes, yes they are. Hundreds of such videos.
From most rural areas to St Petersburg and Moscow.
Villages and cities and universities and shopping centres and so forth.
This one was in a park. Did you notice the grim, Orwellian background? ;)
Yes, and if you had seen lo so many of those (I speed them up, I can read faster than I can listen) you’d see that very thing. You’d have seen the shifting perspectives.
The reactions to major events. That sort of thing.
Indeed.
First wave, issues with the war, worry about the future; mainly brain drain.
Second wave, possible candidates for the meat grinder.
Look, you want to think it’s an grimdark setting there, go ahead.
Just trying to give you some perspective.
It is not a hellhole.
@ 28, yeah, because royalty stopped being royal after a change of sticker on the nation and a modest change of economics.
Which is the reality present.
Soviet royalty was party favorites early and middle on, KGB and GRU became such later on, before their fall and changeover to whateverinhell kleptocracy they’re calling it today.
Both ruled the black market with an iron fist when the iron curtain was a thing, they came somewhat into the light after and became a global blight via Russian Mafia.
Reality, the criminals made mafia to robber baron, unlike in the US, for a change in human history, rode to power, but already having the wheels of power, know how to sort of wield them. Many functionaries that made everything sort of grind through are gone and well, it shows.
Cliff Notes version. It’s 5D chess more complicated, as most of sociology is.
Case in point here, secure warm water port desire. Secure Turkey’s cooperation, regardless, invade.
Not as good as moving the nation to warm waters, but good enough for government work.
Logistics failed, see loss of functionaries.
Other goals, destabilize everything Western, fixate attention.
I’ll not discuss further.
Mmmhmm. No robber baron stuff in the USA.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Robber_baron_(industrialist)
@ 31 Morales
https://finance.yahoo.com/news/youtube-channels-revealing-ordinary-russians-221343949.html
A first person piece by Daniil (1420 interviewer):
(By the way, for those curious like me about what the number 1420 refers to: I researched and it’s completely trivial. The channel was started by two school buddies, and 1420 was the number of their school. Nothing deep and meaningful alas. :-) )
Silentbob:
Indeed. But they’re not like, paid actors or anything.
And one can see the backgrounds, the traffic, the setting, etc.
As I noted, things have developed since then — that piece is from March 22.
You can sense the shift in mood.
Re 26 and 27,
As the guy on video notes, the Finnish border fence project was sparked by the migrant crisis along Polish-Belarusian border a couple years ago (was it in 2020 or 2021?). That debacle was clearly organized by Lukashenka for harassment purposes, using poor Middle Eastern migrant wannabes as pawns, with at least quiet approval from Putin. It was then deemed here in Finland that Putin himself might in foreseeable future try something similar with Finland, Estonia or Latvia. Similar fences have been constructed in several EU countries that border Russia/Belarus since the 2010s, and the Finnish fence project isn’t outstanding in any way.
The project has been controversial here in Finland, though. It is based on the notion that we need to be able to physically, as well as officially, close the border in the event of some poorly defined “extraordinary circumstances”. Here, racist fearmongering over the prospect of “masses” of poor Middle Eastern (or possibly Russian) asylum seekers mixes with the notion that Russian spies or saboteurs or outright plain clothes soldiers (a la Crimea 2014) could slip in more easily if the Finnish border authorities are overwhelmed by large numbers of asylum seekers. Critics claim that the border fence isn’t a cost efficient solution to any of of this, and the prospect of denying asylum seekers at the border smells like racism and human rights violation. Certainly, the fence wouldn’t help against an open military invasion, which has been seen as a plausible prospect since 2022.
@31. John Morales : “Just trying to give you some perspective.
It is not a hellhole.”
Fair enough. I don’t think it’s a “hellhole” necessarily but I’m not sure the fear and oppression of Putin’s rule is helping or working that well for Russia either.
It’s a common trope to argue that people in the enemy country all live in a hellscape. It’s never true. Some things suck in every country, so you can always focus on them and argue the place is horrible, while ignoring your own local hellscapes.
Mobilization in Russia is highly unequal. Putin knows his potential opponents would come from the wealthy middle class of western Russia, so he makes sure to staff his armies with black kids from Alabama and Cherokee kids from the Indian Territory, just like the US does.
Carbonari is a great name for someone charged with burning humans alive.
I’m curious whether Peter was unusually cruel, or if that was the social norm at the time. A century later, the ottoman sultan was far kinder and merely decapitated the janissairies, without mass torture, but ridiculous levels of violence were pretty common back then.
Another one: