The theme of this book is the political system of Russia. It traces the growth of the Russian state from its beginnings in the ninth century to the end of the nineteenth, and the parallel development of the principal social orders: peasantry, nobility, middle class and clergy. The question which it poses is why in Russia — unlike the rest of Europe to which Russia belongs by virtue of her location, race and religion — society has proven unable to impose on political authority any kind of effective restraints. After suggesting some answers to this problem, I go on to show how in Russia the opposition to absolutism tended to assume the form of a struggle for ideals rather than for class interests, and how the imperial government, challenged in this manner, responded by devising administrative practices that clearly anticipate those of the modern police state. Unlike most historians who seek the roots of twentieth-century totalitarianism in western ideas, I look for them in Russian institutions. Although I do make occasional allusions to later events, my narrative largely terminates in the 1800s because, as the concluding chapter points out, the ancien régime in the traditionally understood sense died a quiet death in Russia at that time, yielding to a bureaucratic police regime which in effect has been in power there ever since.
Pipes, Richard. Russia under the Old Regime. Forward, xxi. New York: Charles Scribner’s Sons, 1974.
BackChannels editor has embarked on what has started out as an extraordinary journey through the Russian experience starting with Pipes’ observations about early agricultural yields, extended family-dependent farming practices, migrations to virgin soil and lands with soil more rich, and the impacts of related economic struggles, such as that of wintering-over cottage industries against industrial production, on the cultural, social, and political character of the Russian enterprise.
For referencing other web content so often and so much, BackChannels has practically stopped expressing its own logic and sensibility. Therefore and herewith a few observations related to the now infamous and nationally degrading accusations aimed at the world’s — not only America’s — major high-integrity media (even the famed “Gray Lady” has been the target of somebody’s half-packed mud balls).
First, choose your own preferred mode in contemporary governance:
Feudal Political Absolutism
Modern Checked and Democratic Distribution of Power
That should be easy, but if you’re up to your chinny chin chin in loot, corporate or illicit (or both), and have been the object of generous favor by some singular power, then weighing the options (starting with making a little to a lot less money) may be more difficult.
Let’s move on.
Dictatorship should be oh so 20th Century by now. If a citizen of the old EU / NATO experience, you have seen it, defeated it — Franco, Hitler, Mussolini, Stalin et al. — lived through it, or at least heard about it and thought as much gone with the Cold War and done, finished, and dead in the west. If respectful of the American flag and those of others aligned with it in spirit, then perhaps you have been also respectful of the war dead whose sacrifice has enabled this very freedom to read and write with earnest and responsible intent.
In short, you may know and love freedom of speech — “Press Freedom” — as intended and practiced and appreciated.
And yet here I / you / we are confronted by an “information space” packed with the must vulgar of accusations: those institutions wholly devoted to reason and truth, so much has been inferred, have reverted to malicious invention.
It ain’t so, Joe.
Something has been sabotaged, gone wrong, thrown off course in relation to common confidence in America’s political discourse and news, but is that to be blamed on the many communities of best educated editors and writers and remarkably informed, sharp, and thoughtful readers?
An American homily may apply: “He who points the finger should point it back at himself.”
Two days ago on the web, BackChannels listened to the pleas of a young man in Morocco for relief from lowest-wage labor and daily uncertain employment ($7 per day if it could be found) and exposure to illness and injury and related distress without access to local basic health services. The acquaintance told the story of friends, two among five who for sleep shared a room in a house. One had been stricken with severe stomach pain and the other with a leg injured in a fall, and there followed the story of getting to a hospital, being initially refused emergency care, and persisting in insisting on being seen.
Being seen — eventually the two were, the one with the leg injury being sent home, and the other with severe stomach pain remained in the hospital.
Being made visible – that’s why this post is here.
With online research, it doesn’t take long to connect the absence of simple human decency in the distribution of Moroccan health care in its public facet to the social cancer of pervasive corruption. In fact, corruption appears to BackChannels the chief impediment to the firm establishment and distribution of basic medical services in the state.
There appears in numerous reports the petite corruption of patients bribing the doctors to rush the que.
How rude!
However, of greater concern may be the business to privileged business way of doing business, i.e., what is referred to as institutional or “grand corruption”, and that appears suppressed: nonetheless, one picks up from the literature notes associated with bribery, nepotism, profiteering, skimming, and stealing — all the many possibilities available to the feudal and ruthless.
Who diverted money budgeted for facilities maintenance and how was it really spent?
Who took the medicine or failed to protect it in storage?
Equipment or medicine damaged or stolen would seem the same thing — i.e., useless — to doctors and their patients.
Where is the money going?
Who is getting it?
What are they doing with it?
BackChannels has no idea although reading Gulain P. Denoeux’s 1999 or 2000 report may raise awareness of the tension between a feudal systems of absolute power — and lenience and patronage — and a modern rule-of-law system engaged in independent investigation, administrative and judicial oversight, and associated regulation with corrective measures and penalties specified.
This blogger’s impression, which could change with the next reference piece, is that both external forces and internal pressures have made corruption a major theme in Moroccan governance, and while related policies and laws have been developed to address issues, they have yet to be vigorously implemented by King Mohammed VI who needs must balance the legacy relationships of powerful families and institutions in situ with the state and its quest for a political modernity that cares for, enfranchises, and empowers a broadening swath of the less visible Moroccan population.
In the manner of kings, Mohammed VI this past summer shifted culpability for the death of a fishmonger trying to recover a swordfish — caught out of season — from the garbage truck (in which police had by implication thrown it) to local political authority while pressuring the same to do their work:
“If the King of Morocco is not convinced by the way political activity is conducted and if he does not trust a number of politicians, what are the citizens left with?” Mohammed VI said during a televised speech commemorating the 18th anniversary of his ascension to the throne.
“To all those concerned I say: ‘Enough is enough!’ Fear God in what you are perpetrating against your homeland. Either carry out your duties fully or withdraw from public life.”
Often in the feudal mode, appearance may be made to suffice for performance.
In the modern world, that’s not enough: the conditions of things, the states of affairs come out in open observation and statistics, and today that observation is global.
To get public health distributed as needed — as deserved and as befits the humanity and image of the state — Morocco needs greater economic development supported by rule of law and capable of sustaining revenues within the state and seeing a greater part of that confidently distributed in the public interest.
One may paint the hospital’s new oncology wing to avoid a king’s ire while also making him look good, but one may not paint over the misery of suffering alone in pain and uncertainty without recourse to accessible basic clinic services staffed by personnel educated and trained for the purpose.
It was a makeover fit for a king, Mohammed VI, whose visit, to inaugurate a new oncology wing, was later broadcast on national television. But it did not do much to mask the reality of health care in Morocco, where even Health Minister Houssaine Louardi has conceded that standards of care for the country’s 33 million people are far from adequate.
Public hospitals are decrepit and lack doctors, equipment and medicine, and fewer than 30 percent of Moroccans have health insurance coverage.
The Rif, a predominantly Berber region where al-Hoceima is located, has been gripped by months of unrest.
Protests erupted last October after a fishmonger was crushed to death in a rubbish truck as he tried to retrieve a swordfish confiscated for being caught out of season.
Demands for justice later snowballed into a wider social movement named Al-Hirak al-Shaabi, calling for jobs, development and an end to corruption.
A broadly worded article in the Moroccan penal code criminalizes receiving support from foreign organizations with the purpose of “harming the integrity, sovereignty or independence of the Kingdom, or shaking the loyalty that citizens owe to the state.” This article can be used to penalize a wide range of legitimate forms of expression and association and to curtail the right of Moroccan civil society to seek funding freely as guaranteed by the international human rights conventions to which Morocco is party
Blocked pipes, mouldy walls, wet blankets and a shortage of supplies: this is what users of Morocco’s public health system have to deal with. Dozens of photos published on Facebook have shed light on the grime reality of the country’s public hospitals. According to our Observer, it reveals a disastrous state of affairs that the government’s privatisation plan won’t be able to fix.
The Suharto regime allows no space for a democratic opposition to emerge. So what the pro-democracy, pro-clean-government forces are relying on is not a revolution from below, not a revolution from above, but a revolution from beyond.
Their strategy is to do everything they can to integrate Indonesia into the global economy on the conviction that the more Indonesia is tied into the global system, the more its government will be exposed to the rules, standards, laws, pressures, scrutiny and regulations of global institutions, and the less arbitrary, corrupt and autocratic it will be able to be.
Corruption represents a problem for businesses in Morocco. Almost all sectors suffer from rampant corruption. Cultures of patronage, nepotism and wasta (the use of connections) exist, and inefficient government bureaucracy and excessive red tape deter investors. The legal framework concerning corruption, transparency and integrity is in place, and the regulatory system is becoming increasingly transparent. Under the Moroccan Criminal Code, active and passive bribery, extortion, influence peddling and abuse of office are illegal. Anti-corruption laws are reportedly not enforced effectively by the government. Prosecutions of corruption cases have been accused of targeting only petty corruption, and, allegedly, companies owned by highly influential persons are rarely disciplined. Facilitation payments and giving and receiving gifts are criminalized under Moroccan law, but businesses indicate the likelihood of encountering these practices is high.
The report goes on to comment on Morocco’s judicial system, police, public services, land administration, tax administration, customs administration, public procurement, natural resources, legislation, and civil society.
What are Morocco’s expectations for the 6th session of the UNCAC Conference of States Parties (COSP)?
It’s a UN process. All UN processes are slow because you need consensus and you cannot force governments to agree to anything. Still it’s worth noting that more and more countries accept evaluation, country visits, publication of full review reports. It’s less and less comfortable for the countries that oppose transparency. Morocco will work to help to make progress in the review process at the next COSP session, although I remain sceptical about reaching quick achievements
What is Morocco’s position on holding a discussion of grand corruption at the UNCAC Conference of States Parties (COSP)?
I think the UNCAC COSP can discuss grand corruption. Transparency International should elaborate instruments for this. The Corruption Perceptions Index is biased towards petty corruption—it does not point out grand corruption or institutionalised corruption.
I would cite the confusion and perversion of political language — what is “Left”; what is “Right”: how do gradations work? What is the new political typology — as very much a part of “active measures”.
When we most need to think categorically and straight, we can’t.
In the modern political ecology, I am liberal, humanist, moderate, and social, and yet by the latest in impression, I have no identification with the Left / Hard Left of the, for example, “J Street” type. They ain’t my people.
Active Measures.
KGB Theater.
Yuri Andropov.
How many of my fellow Americans have the knowledge of or sense for each term?
Whatever the answer may be, it’s certain at this moment to be fewer than would be helpful for democracy.
Then their anger was diverted to the statue of Felix Dzerzhinsky, the KGB’s founding father. A couple of men climbed up and slipped a rope round his neck. Then he was yanked up by a crane. Watching “Iron Felix” sway in mid-air, Mr Kondaurov, who had served in the KGB since 1972, felt betrayed “by Gorbachev, by Yeltsin, by the impotent coup leaders”. He remembers thinking, “I will prove to you that your victory will be short-lived.”
Those feelings of betrayal and humiliation were shared by 500,000 KGB operatives across Russia and beyond, including Vladimir Putin, whose resignation as a lieutenant-colonel in the service had been accepted only the day before. Eight years later, though, the KGB men seemed poised for revenge. Just before he became president, Mr Putin told his ex-colleagues at the Federal Security Service (FSB), the KGB’s successor, “A group of FSB operatives, dispatched under cover to work in the government of the Russian federation, is successfully fulfilling its task.” He was only half joking.
Reference Abdullah Ocalan’s vision that misrepresents liberalism and true representative democratic process, which may in turn replicate what the Soviet axis always produced using “sweet words” combined with the rapacious temperament of the politically privileged in an autocratic system: kleptocratic strongmen in palaces and manipulated “masses” around them.
2. Phantoms of the Soviet – PKK
Related to the first point, the PKK set up in the Soviet Era with, apparently, related dogma for intellectual definition, and in that its presence in persons may persist beneath other banners, the same may serve to block western enthusiasm for an independent Kurdistan. In other words and in relation to the Phantoms of the Soviet (a category referenced frequently on BackChannels in relation to other conflicts), the persistence of PKK ideas and actions, whether vengeful or provocative, cloud western support. The only answer to that is to reconsider what is advanced in Kurdistan as regards practical ideals and political language (across languages) and adjusting for the distance in intellectual history between states of affairs in 1984 and those of this day.
3. Putin’s Feudal Revanche
Putin’s Russia represents another rapacious autocracy bent on producing conflict worldwide within a global system of feudal absolute power certain to drive wars of all against all.
The Federation represents Russia’s third flip — two revolutions, three governments — within 100 years of the days of the tsars, and appears now to leverage deals on that basis, e.g., in range of Putin’s sway (and leveraged by the Turkish Stream energy pipeline project, Erdogan has diminished the democracy that initially empowered him and all but returned Turkey to a feudal estate from which he cannot be politically (by mere elections) ejected.
4. Moscow / Moscow-Tehran’s Totalitarian Approach to the Creation and Presentation of Conflict
The intent was to produce a large piece of theater, truly, that would make Assad look good — he envisioned and helped into power the enemy wanted — while producing a major headache for the west. By remaining somewhat fixed in past arrangements and ideas, the Kurdish community has perhaps been maneuvered into aiding the devil that most seeks to control it (and everyone else).
5. State of Kurdish Administrative and Constitutional Development
It has been hard to see the coordinating and self-subordinating (“for the greater good”) character of Kurdish leaders to an overarching administrative and democratic (power checking, power displacing, power distributing, and culturally and politically evolving) system. The latent Kurdish state in fact that may be defined by the subordination of officials to greater institutional arrangements may be there, but the western / publishing-in-English journos haven’t laid out relationships, or I’ve missed that coverage, or the same is not wanted.
In deference to Ocalan’s “democratic communalist” vision, there may be little incentive (by way of example too) to bring western commercial elements and associated vulgarity into a culturally independent Kurdistan. There are many other ways to pursue and sustain both cultural and political evolution and distributed economic development across a new polity (reference authors Brown, McRobie, Schumacher, among others).
Addendum to the Above: Found Posted on YouTube – October 17, 2017
6. Modern Kurdish Defense Considerations Against Adverse Feudal Estates
Much in favor of the defense of Kurdish independence may be the reversion of the Turkish government to feudalism and its history of persecution of the Kurds and others. Clearly, the Kurdish community needs an effective defense against adverse egomaniac and ill-willed potentates.
7.Armed Proxies of Iranian Fascism
Washington needs to be pressed hard about the powering up and evident fielding of Iranian-backed Iraqi Shiite militia in the latest suppression of Kurdish independence. At this point, Moscow / Moscow-Tehran’s kleptocratic totalitarian ambition should be glaring, and the western public should join the Kurdish community in blocking greater Iranian fascism through armed proxies.
If there’s a secret to peace all around, it may be in the separation of the present western-backed governments from the external meddling of rogue dictatorships that wish to drag the region backward toward feudal barbarism using the most nefarious of political methods to do it. The leaders in that aggression have learned how to make money off the misery of others while they themselves remain remote from the nightmares they have created.
The KGB and its counterparts in the countries of the Warsaw Pact kept on infiltrating neo-Nazi organisations in West Germany and some other Western countries, but then with a different aim, namely to goad them into extremist activities, only to accuse Western countries of the alleged resurgence of Nazism afterwards. One example of such initiatives was the ‘swastika graffiti operation’ devised by Soviet KGB General Ivan Agayants, who at that time headed the KGB Department D (disinformation), and carried out in 1959– 1960 in West Germany. 79 In that period, KGB agents painted swastikas and anti-Semitic slogans on synagogues, tombstones and Jewish-owned shops. Jewish families received anonymous hate mail and threatening phone calls. The initial KGB operation would stir up residual anti-Semitic sentiments in the West German society and, consequently, produce a snowball effect where troublemakers would carry out anti-Semitic activities on their own.
Note: the above relayed passage was highlighted while reading and before encountering Michel Casey’s interview with the author, in which it is described as “One of the most widely cited moments in reviews on your book . . . .”
🙂
It has been BackChannels hope that readers less specialized in political history and dimensions within it will nonetheless appreciate some bridging between the world of the ambitious academic and the information bombarded generalist who may most of all appreciate a point made fast and indelibly.
As its editor and, I’m sure, it’s readers have figured out, more material of interest often winds up in reference than in the main body of the post. At near publication on this post, a quick look-up was given the terms, “Putin, political technologist” — here’s the image of first page results (Oct. 16, 2017):
Also related on BackChannels as regards the “KGB Playbook”, two posts, one related to the incubating of ISIS by Bashar al-Assad and the other the “application” of Islamic Terrorism to the development of what this blog refers to as the “Newest Nationalism”:
BackChannels 