Damn, this reminds me of a fiction story I read a long time ago, of a parallel timeline where Gandhi tried to use nonviolent resistance on Nazi occupants. Spoiler:
Nazis simply kept exterminating the Indian population, just like they wanted to, with zero remorse. The only effect of the nonviolent resistance was that it made their job slightly easier, otherwise everyone ignored it. (The moral of the story: you can only appeal to your opponent’s conscience if he has one.)
*
But then, why is the entire world not like Russia? Missing a genius psychopath like Lenin cannot be the whole answer: psychopaths are everywhere, sooner or later someone would stumble upon the right strategy. Also, I think that Russia was quite… dark… long before communism.
There are two hypotheses I am aware of. First, the hypothesis of a huge indefensible steppe, where the geography makes “build something and protect it” a losing strategy, and the only way to be safe is to proactively destroy everyone else, as far as you can. That of course keeps the population in constant misery and conflict.
But the Chinese seem to have had a similar problem, and they solved it by building a wall. Why haven’t Russian Tzars done the same? Maybe the situation was not as similar as it sounds, or maybe building a wall of that size is a project super unlikely to succeed, so it’s the China that requires explanation, not Russia.
Second, the hypothesis of a resource curse (a.k.a. The Dictator’s Playbook, The Rules for Rulers), according to which the places where “the population generates wealth” incentivize democracy, as people who are happy, well fed, and well educated, can generate more wealth, and if you hurt the people, you destroy the most precious resource you have; and the places where “the natural resources generate wealth” incentivize dictatorship, because you only need a few slaves to extract the resources, and an army to keep them working and prevent someone else from taking over your business, and everything else can go to hell. Is Russia similarly cursed by having a lot of oil today (and other resources in the past)?
The problem with this hypothesis is that in current world, an army requires modern weapons, which require having an industrial base; the industrial base requires education, so the people become important again; you cannot go full Pol Pot when surrounded by developed countries. Then again, “some industry and some education” do not require general well-being of your entire population; you could simply elevate some selected cities (such as Moscow and St Petersburg) to modern era and keep the rest at the stone age level. Maybe Russia recently went a little further towards the dictatorship end of the scale than would be optimal, hurt their population a bit too much, and as a consequence now its army became too dysfunctional?
Depending on which hypothesis is right, a possible solution might involve some artificial barriers (being surrounded by NATO members, who do not proactively attack the territory of Russia proper, is a kind of such barrier), or finding alternative sources of energy so efficient that oil would become virtually useless. Too optimistic, I know; I am just brainstorming here.
Resource rich countries don’t decide “how much of a dictatorship should I be?”, it’s rather that an organization with very strong moral mazes dynamics can manage to do resource extraction but they don’t manage more complicated processes.
You can’t easily move to a less corrupt military in peacetime just because you think you need a functioning military because the military lacks good feedback cycles.
Complete focus on military strength is how you get to the kind of governance that North Korea has.
Damn, this reminds me of a fiction story I read a long time ago, of a parallel timeline where Gandhi tried to use nonviolent resistance on Nazi occupants. Spoiler:
Nazis simply kept exterminating the Indian population, just like they wanted to, with zero remorse. The only effect of the nonviolent resistance was that it made their job slightly easier, otherwise everyone ignored it. (The moral of the story: you can only appeal to your opponent’s conscience if he has one.)
*
But then, why is the entire world not like Russia? Missing a genius psychopath like Lenin cannot be the whole answer: psychopaths are everywhere, sooner or later someone would stumble upon the right strategy. Also, I think that Russia was quite… dark… long before communism.
There are two hypotheses I am aware of. First, the hypothesis of a huge indefensible steppe, where the geography makes “build something and protect it” a losing strategy, and the only way to be safe is to proactively destroy everyone else, as far as you can. That of course keeps the population in constant misery and conflict.
But the Chinese seem to have had a similar problem, and they solved it by building a wall. Why haven’t Russian Tzars done the same? Maybe the situation was not as similar as it sounds, or maybe building a wall of that size is a project super unlikely to succeed, so it’s the China that requires explanation, not Russia.
Second, the hypothesis of a resource curse (a.k.a. The Dictator’s Playbook, The Rules for Rulers), according to which the places where “the population generates wealth” incentivize democracy, as people who are happy, well fed, and well educated, can generate more wealth, and if you hurt the people, you destroy the most precious resource you have; and the places where “the natural resources generate wealth” incentivize dictatorship, because you only need a few slaves to extract the resources, and an army to keep them working and prevent someone else from taking over your business, and everything else can go to hell. Is Russia similarly cursed by having a lot of oil today (and other resources in the past)?
The problem with this hypothesis is that in current world, an army requires modern weapons, which require having an industrial base; the industrial base requires education, so the people become important again; you cannot go full Pol Pot when surrounded by developed countries. Then again, “some industry and some education” do not require general well-being of your entire population; you could simply elevate some selected cities (such as Moscow and St Petersburg) to modern era and keep the rest at the stone age level. Maybe Russia recently went a little further towards the dictatorship end of the scale than would be optimal, hurt their population a bit too much, and as a consequence now its army became too dysfunctional?
Depending on which hypothesis is right, a possible solution might involve some artificial barriers (being surrounded by NATO members, who do not proactively attack the territory of Russia proper, is a kind of such barrier), or finding alternative sources of energy so efficient that oil would become virtually useless. Too optimistic, I know; I am just brainstorming here.
Resource rich countries don’t decide “how much of a dictatorship should I be?”, it’s rather that an organization with very strong moral mazes dynamics can manage to do resource extraction but they don’t manage more complicated processes.
You can’t easily move to a less corrupt military in peacetime just because you think you need a functioning military because the military lacks good feedback cycles.
Complete focus on military strength is how you get to the kind of governance that North Korea has.