Enter this very enlightening piece from Peter Pomerantsev in the London Review of Books. The premise is what Russians refer to as the “Sistema”:
There are any number of paths and initiations into sistema, the liquid mass of networks, corruptions and evasions – elusive yet instantly recognisable to members – which has ordered the politics and social psychology of Russian civilisation since tsarist times.
And here’s the super gut punch:
This is the genius of sistema: even if you manage to Avoid the draft, you, your mother and your family have become part of the network of bribery, fear, simulation and dissimulation. You have learned to become an actor playing different roles in relation to the state, the great intruder you wish to avoid or outwit or simply buy off. You are already semi-legal, a transgressor, but that’s fine for sistema: as long as you only simulate, you will never do anything real, you will always look for compromise and you will feel just the right amount of discomfort. You are now part of the system. If a year in the army is the overt process that binds young Russians to the nation, a far more powerful induction comes with the rituals of avoiding military service.
Read the rest here.
And if you read carefully, you’ll see a discussion of rules and laws that harks back to the very first thing I wrote on this blog, here.
Related Posts
- Hype, Truth and Something In Between, Nigeria Edition
- The First Rule Of Fighting Narcos: You Do Not Talk About Fighting Narcos
- Street Markets 101: Che Misterio Navigates Argentina’s Black Market for Dollars
- What Silk Road’s narcotics trading says about the FX market and capital controls
- Cocaine Cowboys and the Modern Banking System
