The fish is rotting from the head for the second time in Russian history, Eidman says

[Igel]

11. You missed the wishful thinking.

To keep it short(ish).

1. I've followed such pronouncements since about 1975. The generalization is this: Most of the time you know the conclusion before you know the topic. Look at the official view from DC, consider what you think about the president, and add in a pinch of what the public thinks. If there's a Big Event, skew towards public thinking. There, you're able to predict Soviet and Russian-related punitry for the last 40 years with probably 95% accuracy. Russia good, Russia bad, Putin good, Soviet Union evil. Whatever. Write the conclusion and then fill in the justification.

Since 2012 nobody's liked Putin. They wanted him gone, so people bent over backwards to predict his early exit. A big march in 2012 proves people didn't like him--approval ratings be damned. And he was undertaking steps to avoid mass unrest. Leave out the background, and it sounds bad. The Stratfor guy probably knows background and got stuff right. The NYT Moscow coverage these days is parasitic on group think.

Look at something like events from 1991 and you have to yawn. The media was breathless, worried. It was high stakes so intelligence services were on high alert and could afford no mistakes. But seriously, there were only a few pivot points worth fretting over. When tanks rolled into Ljubljana, when the pulled out, when the Duma was shelled, and how would Russia hold together. That's it. When the tanks pulled out of Ljubljana everybody was pretty sure that Estonia and Latvia would say ciao and nothing would happen. The generals in Moscow considered all the events in Slovenija, and that was that. They probably told Jugoslavija to get the tanks out. And whether Russia would hold together was unpredictable--it really was that close. And it's left wounds on the Russian psyche.

2.
So "mass unrest preparations." Others have said that any march can turn violent. We see that in the US, can't get worked up over it. 50k, like the White Revolution, would be a real mess (official estimate too low, advocates are insanely high in so many ways, I go with about 50k because I like the number and if it's 75k, it doesn't matter). But it wasn't going to go that way: the FSB knew about the march, quantity of people, route, and Putin could have pretty much stopped it that morning with a phone call. Just keep the out-of-town trains from running and have the metro trains avoid the station that was the march's starting point. 400 out of 50k or more, not so bad. But Putin had no qualms about letting the violence happen. We read one message, locals read another.

It was an excuse. Others have pointed out that Russians prefer stability to freedom. One survey even had young adults overwhelmingly saying that they had enough freedom, some said society offered too much. Not fertile ground for revolution, that.

Meanwhile, Putin's approval dipped into the low 60s for a couple of months once. Obama's reached the low 60s for a couple of months, once. By that measure, Obama should have feared overthrow any minute, heaven knows enough people hated him viscerally. (I trust the poll numbers. Backchannel Slavist wisdom is that the Levada Center is pretty good with their data. They're pretty much it for reliable Russian polling. They've been forced to doctor a very, very few numbers, and word's leaked behind the scenes, sometimes prior to release, that they're doctored and why just because it's such a big deal.)

The mass unrest at issue has been described as maidan-like events. If stability >> freedom, the maidan is a center of chaos. It sucks strength from every government that has to confront it. Use force, bad government; let it go, government's weak, impotent. Government falls, snap elections, previous rulers are too mean or to wussy to re-elect. Lose-lose, political kryptonite.

Second option has Putin up at night. You know how the Donbas fell, that slow-mo rolling coup? Again, lose-lose, no way to confront it without a shoot out, and the social media feed shows dead unarmed civilians. Government falls, snap elections, yada-yada. That was almost certainly FSB or GRU, it was brilliant, and it was oh-so-Soviet mentality. If it wasn't FSB or GRU, they studied it and it's now in their toolkit. How to take over without firing a shot, in a way that even if you lose you win. And then when the soldiers occupied the towns, the city governments were prostrate and had piss-poor communication with the central government. Genius. Evil genius, but genius. Hybrid war.

Remember the recent non-protest protest? Protest called, it was banned, police showed up and made sure the march didn't happen. No march, no rally in the park and adjacent square that weekend afternoon? Just a whole bunch of families and others sitting, eating, walking, talking, playing. So the police were there, and confidently reported the protest did not happen, all's well in Mudville. Then all these phones buzz with a social media message and scores of protesters pulled their rolled up posters out, unfurled them and stood up. Insta-rally. The FSB didn't see it coming. A conspiracy like that. Putin peed his pants. Yes, this and the slo-mo coup tie together.

Now imagine teams of 20 people in 10 cities from Novgorod to Nakhodka, Murmansk to Rostov na Dony, in the parks around municipal buildings (as there usually are) one afternoon. Then from each park 20 people, 10 unarmed, 1 armed with a camera broadcasting to live social media, and 9 armed men who had their assault rifles in gym bags, go into the municipal buildings. Islamic terrorists would be better politically, killing everybody they met. But these occupiers would be bearers of chaos and instability that would castrate government--and to deal with them would be to kill unarmed men and women on camera. Unless you prevent it by controlling social media. If you can't prevent it, you need to have instant SWAT teams ready to respond before they set up shop and it becomes a standoff, or you control social media and news media so the word doesn't get out when you kill all the bastards. These are like red and green putinite, able to strip Superpoot of his super powers.

These are two examples of serious "mass unrest" that's utterly not "mass" but which Russia's prepared for. It's dangerous, and something that "foreign agents" could help organize. USAID, for example. Both involve small groups of possible conspirators and could be done with meddling from the US in internal Russian matters. If you're sufficiently cynical and a believer, something you're unlikely to read in the NYT or Stratfor, last fall was revenge.


Even the shut-down of religious groups fits this. It's billed as religious extremism and cultural oppression. You have to know your bolshevik history--old believers and baptists helped smuggle in bolshevik tracts, distribute them, guide revolutionaries to towns in safety, in return for promises of freedom of worship under the bolsheviks. (Just read Lunacharsky.) Under the Soviets, JWs and pentecostals and baptists with ties to the west were a conduit for smuggling dissident info out from the USSR, information and money into the USSR. The KGB didn't give these groups any rest. Even the Central Committee shows that official invitations of religious figures and their trips abroad allowed them to function as an informal backchannel for messages during times of war or international tension when even president's or prime minister's cabinet couldn't be trusted because the very fact of the communication was a secret. That last bit's from a recent article in a journal whose advisory board's a who's who of Putin cronies--it should be published in English next winter. All the religions with links to the US, that USAID or the CIA (etc.) could use ... Are being shut down. And the NYT just sees "religious discrimination."

Yeah, yeah, Putin bad. A bit paranoid. He's not going anywhere. And he's not stupid. Remember, aspens turn colors in clusters because their roots connect them.