Gary Shteyngart, Absurdistan, ISBN 978-0812971675

If you are a sad sack about New York City, unsporting, balding, with a growing tummy, the last billet in a dating scene office drone, who pays for his 1 bdrm. apartment shared with bedbugs and cockroaches a hefty sum, which will buy you a palatial mansion in rural Tennessee, banging against other sweaty bodies on subway in the wee hours of the morning, you probably dream of Neverland. The Neverland where all the man are stupid and/or poor and all the most beautiful ladies line up to have sex with you because you are an American. Shteyngart's Russia is this Neverland. His books are very boring compendium of the Freudian dreams of overgrown New York infants.

Tribute to Momus (Felix Kubin strikes back)

Momus. Solution 11-167 The Book of Scotlands, Sternberg Press, 2010

Momus, a.k.a. Nick Currie is a multitalented artist--"polymath" they speak of scientists--who is being unfairly kept down by his own versatility. He is, of course, best known as a rock musician of no mean talent; I consider him a true heir to late/late John Lennon of "Strawberry Fields" and "Imagine" fame though this opinion is rarely shared. But he is also a musical critic, quite an accomplished photographer, connoisseur of architecture and a collector of exotic women including Japanese feminist radicals, an underage daughter of a Bangladeshi merchant and a French princess of Russo-Polish lineage, who lives in Germany, though in the last case I am not sure she is not a fembot.

His talent of the novelist reflect this polymorphous erudite culture. In his "Scotlands" he flawlessly passes from philosophical discourse, to socio-cultural criticism, to the vilest pornography (Scotland 28). You can imagine him as more sober but less stylistically refined companion to recently deceased D. F. Wallace, whose masterpiece "The Infinite Jest" would benefit much from the length similar to Momus', so it would not require a grant to finish it up. But his narrative gift is less strong and he reminds the reader of testosterone-pumped but rather cold version of Borges. Buy this book, enjoy it, but do not expect great discoveries for his real vocation is music.

Russian Defense Industry (in Russian), Part II

The author’s essay argues that, unlike the Russian Army, which has undergone
substantive transformation since the beginning of reforms in late 1990s-early 2000s,
the defense industry lagged or even reversed its reforms. Main impediments of
redesigning ex-Soviet defense industry are far from financial.

• First, it is a location of major Soviet research and production centers in the labor-deficient and very expensive cities of Moscow and St. Petersburg.

• Second, it is low liquidity of the real estate market particularly in provinces, which prevents rational migration of a workforce.

• Third, reduced political competition after 2004 left major technical and organizational decisions in the hands of a few government officials, which have vested interests in low transparency and proliferation of levels of management at the expense of production.

To read the Part II of the essay (in Russian) please navigate to comments I-IV.

Russian Defense Industry (in Russian)

Abstract

The author’s essay argues that, unlike the Russian Army, which has undergone
substantive transformation since the beginning of reforms in late 1990s-early 2000s,
the defense industry lagged or even reversed its reforms. Main impediments of
redesigning ex-Soviet defense industry are far from financial.

• First, it is a location of major Soviet research and production centers in the labor-deficient and very expensive cities of Moscow and St. Petersburg.

• Second, it is low liquidity of the real estate market particularly in provinces, which prevents rational migration of a workforce.

• Third, reduced political competition after 2004 left major technical and organizational decisions in the hands of a few government officials, which have vested interests in low transparency and proliferation of levels of management at the expense of production.

To read the essay (in Russian) please navigate to comments I-V.  The entire essay will be posted later.

Фиг. 1 Организация управления оборонной промышленности СССР около 1979 года. Черная маска изображает Члена Политбюро ЦК КПСС, серая—Заместителя Председателя СМ СССР белая—Секретаря ЦК КПСС. Слабыми сторонами этой организации, помимо внеэкономических методов руководства и, соответственно, непомерного бремени на экономику, является отсутствие аналитических функций—приоритеты, в основном, формируются на основании уже достигнутых показателей, и чрезвычайная зависимость политики от позиции нескольких ключевых управленцев.


Фиг. 2. После ряда реорганизаций, управление оборонной промышленностью РФ приобрело чрезвычайно запутанный и многоступенчатый характер. Оборонная промышленность оказалась поделена между ведомствами преимущественно президентского и преимущественно совминовского подчинения. Деятельность ВПК свелась к роли посредника между СМ РФ, Минпромторгом и рядом квазигосударственных организаций. Центр формирования политики переместился к Заместителю Министра Обороны по Вооружениям, который является и заказчиком, и приемщиком военной техники. Сосредоточение в одних руках и плановых, и контрактных полномочий создает большие возможности для злоупотреблений.

Фиг. 3 Реформированная система. Функции стратегического планирования переходят к Генеральному Штабу и соответствующим подразделениям других ведомств. ВПК занимается исключительно подготовкой бюджета и унификацией протоколов испытаний военной техники. Единственной производственной единицей выходящей на государственный уровень является руководство системообразующих контракторов (prime contractors) силовых министерств и ведомств.

The Cambridge History of the Cold War, vols. I-III

The Cambridge History of the Cold War is a thematically organized encyclopedia. As such, short but comprehensive history of the Cold War, which could be used as a reference source is long overdue. The problem with the encyclopedia is a highly variable level of articles, ranging from profound (D. Holloway), to the hackwork by the former Communist officials tailored to current DC intellectual fashions of their sponsors (V. Zubok), to the bizarre (G. Arrighi). The editors should have done a better work to incorporate the articles into a common whole. But still, it is an enormous achievement.

John W. Steinberg, All the Tsar’s Men: Russia’s General Staff and the Fate of the Empire, 1898-1914, Woodrow Wilson Center Press, Baltimore, ISBN 978-0-8018-9545-6.

John W. Steinberg, All the Tsar’s Men: Russia’s General Staff and the Fate of the Empire, 1898-1914, Woodrow Wilson Center Press, Baltimore, ISBN 978-0-8018-9545-6.


The new books are frequently advertised as “magisterial” or “definitive” studies but rarely appear as such after a few months in circulation. This fate, I am sure will not befell “All the Tsar’s Men.” Despite the shortcomings which I list below, the book is so thorough in its coverage and contains so much of the material, which is hardly available outside of the Russian archives that it constitutes an absolutely necessary resource for the scholar of the period.

In my view, these are the following weaknesses in J. W. Steinberg narration.

• Steinberg chastises the officers of the Russian General Staff for their “ineptitude”—so obvious in the course of the Russo-Japanese War—and even more costly in terms of lives and materiel in the course of the First World War. His low opinion of the Russian Command during the Russo-Japanese War is entirely justified. What he ignores is that even more glaring errors were committed by all sides in the First World War. Incessant frontal attacks over the top were practiced by all WWI commanders until the very end; shuffling of the top command by the French every day by the dozen and co-equal rigidity of the Germans in keeping all reins of power in the hands of Ludendorf and his small cadre of the Quartermeister Generals continued until the end of the war.

• By the newly opened sources, the Civil War in Russia was run, from the Bolshevik side, by the second team of the Russian Imperial General Staff—its officers, typically recruited within the rank from the Lieutenant Colonel to the Major General. They won handily over the first team of Imperial Generals (Denikin, Kolchak, Kutepov) who fought on the Whites’ side. Most, though by no means all, surviving members of this second team were executed during 1937-1938 purges. 

• Because the author completely ignores Russian, or Mexican Civil War experience, he claims that the cavalry was obsolete by 1914. This was true only in the Western European trenches. In many other contexts, cavalry could be still a viable arm. Moreover, the contemporary and even WWII armies used more, not fewer horses and mules than their predecessors because the much increased logistical complexity of the modern armies in the conditions of mountains, poor roads and gasoline shortages still much relied on draught animals.

• The only real fault, which could be attributed to the “whiz kids” of the RGS was their inability to engage scientists and engineers in their education and planning. Moreover, Russian military caste practiced an open disdain to “Shpaks” (civilians, the “top hat wearers”) much like their Latin American, Austro-Hungarian or French, but much unlike their high-ranking German counterparts.

• The fractious, court and political intrigue-riddled system of the upper echelons of the Russian civilian power bears much larger guilt in the demise of the Russian Empire than any mistakes of the RGS or inflexibility of its culture. Furthermore, much more modern German Empire collapsed almost simultaneously with Russian, Ottoman and Austro-Hungarian Empire. Something was in the air.

• Finally, the author completely avoids the subject of the naval warfare. It has some justification in the fact that the RGS as most of the staffs of its day did not appreciate and could not achieve the integrated performance of the Army-Navy contingents. Yet, the misguided naval policy before and after Tsusima contributed as much if not more to the fall of the Russian Empire as the defeats of the ground forces.

Andrew Scull, Hysteria (Biographies of diseases), Oxford UP, 2009

Unfair and semi-literate vituperation against the psychiatrists and their charges. On one hand, Scull demagogically accuses past greats such as Pinel, Charcot or Freud that they did not measure up
to DSM-IV and neuropsychiatry of today. Yes, yes, and Napoleon was not so keen on aviation, and
FDR did not develop Internet. On the other hand, his own identification of "insanity" and "madness" are the pure constructs from the Middle Ages.