Salaries and Social Status in USSR

Officially USSR proclaimed equality of all people, but as one joke says, some were more equal than others.

In practice there was a complex hierarchy based on perceived value of one's work. On top of the official social pyramid were actually factory workers and miners. Government pampered them a lot and called them best and most important and so on. They were even paid better too, especially miners. Miners and factory employees had highest standing and highest official salaries.

That however did not mean they had highest quality of life or standards of living. Some other groups had better living standards for reasons I will explain below.

In contrast cleaners, street swipes and such had low standing and were indeed seen and dumb and uneducated.

Another sector that was look down upon was retail. They were seen as speculates who only peddle goods and do not produce anything.

Hard to tell where construction workers would be in that hierarchy, but likely somewhat below of factory workers.

White collar workers still had better working conditions and, in some cases, could steal shit so they often had it better.

In general one's ability to steal something from a warehouse or such had a much greater impact on standard of living and quality of life than official salary. Official salaries only ranged from 120 to 330 rubles or so.

Some white-collar workers however were seen as more important than the others, for examples military engineers who design weapons.

In general, there was a complicated hierarchy of how valuable or important was one's work seen.

Party members had the best lifestyle though. Their official salaries were small, and they had to pay a party membership fee out of it. However, they had a lot of perks of office to compensate for that: state cars, chaffers, premium government accommodation and summer houses, party owned seaside resorts, even special stores for party members only and so on. Because of all these perks Communist Party was the wealthiest organization in the USSR.

All that compromised politics as politicians were focused on making sure they will not lose out in shifting web of informal alliances rather than represented people or stood for anything. Because if they lose out and removed from office, they will lose all these juicy perks and become dirt poor.

Another group who had real high income and standards of living were smugglers of western goods. They could make a lot of money and be underground millionaires. There was risk however if they were exposed, as western goods were illegal. Some smugglers were even sentenced to death and executed. Smuggling Levi's jeans where as bad as smuggling cocaine as far as Soviet law was concerned.

Prices in USSR

A meme on reddit inspired me to write about pricing of the goods in the politicized economy of the USSR.

they priced goods cheap (cheaper than market value) because people like lower prices more than higher prices and government wanted to be popular and brag how they care more about working class by offering them goods at cheaper prices compared to fat cat greedy capitalist who bleed people dry to buy themselves another mansion

that had a predictable (for an economist) economic outcome of there being constant goods shortage (deficit was a word used a lot in USSR, every Joe Shmoe knew it): empty shelves in most stores and ques. When something good suddenly appears in stores it gets bought out almost immediately and only some unpopular shit sticks around.

however, government managed to take credit for low prices without being blamed for shortages. People were not economically savvy enough to associate artificially low prices with constant goods shortages, so even Gorby built his popularity on keeping prices down.

In 1991, when Yeltsin ended price regulation, prices gone up, but shortages ended. Some die hard commies still blame him for "robbing the people" by doing that. The country went from people have money to buy, but there is nothing to buy; towards there are goods to buy now, but people do not have (enough) money to buy them.

Second Cold War

Over the past 10 or so years we often see various events of backsliding of democracy and freedom, both imaginary and real. Often these events did not receive significant attention. After Spring of Nations or 89 and collapse of USSR Western world thought that freedom have won. It is only a matter of time before the last remaining enclaves of tyranny will finally liberalize and democratize. In 2000s even Chinese Hu Jintao committed towards limits on Presidential terms in power. There was of course no way for the defeated autocrats to somehow crawl back into power. 

That ended up an overly optimistic outlook. Couple of decades later in 2025 authoritarian forces in Russia, China and some countries around them managed to rebuild themselves and now want to preserve their autocratic rule over what is left of their former empire. Now Russia interferes in Georgia and Kyrgyzstan to impose autocratic rule there. China destroyed democracy in Hong Kong and now wants to do the same in Taiwan.

I too often was overly carefree of many actions by Putin and the other autocrats, believing they merely cling to power with lies and cheap tricks. After all they have their money in western tax heavens and their kids live in Western countries. There is no way they would want to destroy Western liberal order; all they want to keep their autocratic rule in their particular jurisdiction. 

That autocratic rule is bad in itself. In the past I wrote many articles, exposing how Putin's propaganda machine works and how one can dismantle it by hitting its weak points.

However, their continued persistence with the war in Ukraine and interference in Kyrgyzstan and Georgia suggests something else. Either Putin was out to restore autocratic neo-USSR (Eurasia) all along or people who wants that managed to sideline all other groups in power and now free to pursue their agenda.

Either way it is a dangerous turn of events that heralds beginning of the Second Cold War. Western Intelligence Agencies should start seeing Russia and China as enemies once again and begin working on defeating them in this new confrontation. 

This can be challenging. Sure, they are smaller and less rich now. However, they no longer have rebellious Warsaw Pact countries to deal with. Areas they control now are at average more backwards and more accepting towards tyranny. 

In contrast West is divided and confused due to wokeism and undue Russophilia in some circles. Current threats should not be underestimated.  Sure, there were communist sympathizers in the US even during Vietnam war and that did not destroyed democracy in the US. However, these anti-war protests managed to do what Viet Cong could not do on the battlefield, make US withdraw and leave Saigon government unable to defend itself. 

Unlike during USSR times, this time Russia does not limit itself to only pushing left wing ideologies but instead supports all malicious and destructive ideologies no matter where they stand on ideological spectrum. Various pro-Russian thugs, such as Antifa, radical ecologists, wokes, certain traditionalists and many more destroying West from within, like mite eats away at tree trunk. Intelligence Agencies should step up their game to stop these destructive actions.

West still have some allies in Russia itself as well as some other countries currently ruled by dictators of Eastern Club. However, levels of repression in Eastern countries prevent them from significantly challenging current regimes.

Dictators of the East can be defeated, however. Just like the last time West should break through the information blockade, censorship and propaganda to destroy them. China has this Great Firewall precisely because they fear that certain information available on the internet can destroy CCP's grip on power, that is why they get out of their way to suppress this information and prevent anyone living in China from seeing it.

Thus, the path for victory is simple, just bypass the firewall and let people access this "dangerous" information. Then see them rebel against their overlords, just like what Lelouch did to Chinese Federation in season 2. I even wrote several articles about exact structure of propaganda myth perpetrated by each of these countries and what exact information can take each of these regimes down. 

In Russia Alexey Navalny was trying to do just that and spread just such dangerous information to Russian public, that is why Russian police killed him. However, if anonymous sources would spread information about Putin's corruption and abuses, then Russian police will have no one to arrest.

Eastern Autocracy can be defeated, and I hope victory comes the sooner the better.

On Peace in Ukraine

 

Donald Trump victory in the US elections sparked renewed conversation about peace in Ukraine. Together with talks about peace there also surfaced a much murkier and more confusing topic about terms of any such peace. Different sides of conflict all have different views as to what a fair peace deal will look like, such differences in views might very well preclude any peace from being made.

I already predicted that instead of any negotiated peace the current situation with de-facto zones of military control on the ground would become de-facto reality. This is not the peace any of the sides really want but it's the only one either of them can achieve. 

Current de facto line of control would become a new frontier or a de-facto border between not just Russia and Ukraine but also between European Union and Western world on one hand and the eastern Eurasian Russian Chinese one. A new frontier of the Second Cold War. Kind of like Korean DMZ. I will cover Second Cold War in a separate article, here I will talk about Ukraine in particular.

This de facto military line of control is not perfect, but it is better than de-jure borders or any of the maximalist aims, professed by either side.

Letting Russia keep the territory it occupied may seem like a loss to Ukraine. However, a real loss would be losing sovereignty and being turned into a Moscow puppet, just like Belarus is. Losing some borderlands is much better than letting Moscow tell Kyiv what to do.

Both pro-Russian and pro-European side tend to overestimate their popularity and underestimate that of the opposing side. Everyone thinks that everyone else is much like their own neighborhood and if there are any different people, they are but a small minority. In reality the country is much more diverse than that.

Yanukovich era Minister of Education, Tabachnik, once proposed to make Galicia (West Ukraine) into its own country. He erroneously thought that pro-Western sentiment is limited to just that area of the country and by making it independent from the rest of Ukraine he can solve the political division and turn the rest of Ukraine into second Belarus. 

Reality is that pro-European sentiment spreads much further east than just Galicia. Even areas as far as Poltava, Sumy and Kremenchug are very pro-European and majority there speaks Ukrainian language daily. Even some mostly or partly Russophone cities like Dnipro or Odesa, would prefer EU over Eurasia. Donbas is rather unique it its Russophone monolingualism and Ukrainian language can be heard frequently in Dnipro, Odesa and even sometimes in Kharkiv.

On the other hand, pro-Ukrainian (European) side thinks that the whole conflict only happened because of history of Russification mixed with Russian propaganda aimed at advancing Russian Imperialist ambitions against Ukraine. They think that Ukraine already lost a lot in the past and it would be unfair to give Russia any more land that they already grabbed. Theya also thinks that if Putin's propaganda can be stopped, country can be united once again. Past Russification can be undone, and Ukraine will be happy and united again.

Reality is that Donbas, Crimea and Azov Sea coast were settled by Russian Empire in 19th century and almost no one there can understand Ukrainian language. It is areas with mixed population like Dnipro and Zaporizhya that de facto divide Ukraine pro-Russian and pro-European sides of the country. Even politicians such as Yulia Timoshenko and Volodymir Zelenskiy did not spoke Ukrainian language when they were children and learned it at later times in life.

In the past I wrote several articles about why current post-Soviet borders are not good and what better borders there could be in this region. I liked some here and you can find more if you search my blog.

Not only that, but current de-facto border has its advantages to Ukraine.

Back before Euromaidan and any wars with Russia when Ukraine had control over all of its de-jure territory, Ukrainian politics were dominated by constant geopolitical strife. Half of the country wanted to integrate with European Union and the other half with Russian Eurasia instead. Politics were dominated by this geo-political division. 

If Ukraine regains back all of its de-jure territories, this geo-political split will likely once again dominate politics in Kyiv. Pro-Russian people from currently Russia occupied lands will vote for anti-EU, pro-Russian parties that will work to prevent Ukraine from joining the EU and NATO. Someone like Yanukovych could again win election. That would mean that Ukraine will forever be stuck in a geo-political limbo between East and West. That is something that benefits neither west, nor Ukraine itself. 

Ultimately Ukraine needs to rid itself of its anti-European ballast and finally join EU and NATO. As much as you can argue that Donbas and Crimea are brainwashed by Putin and his TV, there is no simple and easy way to undo this brainwashing, Russian TV is free to air and broadcasting towers from Russia reach far into its neighbors' territory. All the Russophones who want to watch Russian propaganda are always able to tune it. As stupid as it is to believe Putin's lies about Banderites and Nazis in Ukraine, people of Donbas and Crimea choose to do so. It's time to stop trying to save them and simply let them join Russia they love so much.

On the other hand, Russia should not be allowed to dictate Kyiv what to do. People of Ukraine from Lviv to Kremenchug did choose Europe over their ties with Moscow. Euromaidan is definitive proof of that. It's an ultimate democratic expression of popular will. It will be unfair to betray these people who fought for freedom and their free choice of their future. 

Ukraine is Europe. Ukraine is not Eurasia or some brotherly nation of Russia. Thus, Ukraine should be allowed to join EU and NATO and Russia absolutely should not receive any Finlandization style concessions on this. 

Sovereignty of Ukraine should be guaranteed by Western military presence. Border between Ukraine and Russia occupied areas should be reinforced and patrolled by European or UN troops to prevent further fighting.

Ukraine joining European Union will benefit both sides enormously. It will improve quality of life in Ukraine while Europe will benefit from skilled and educated workforce that Ukraine has. It will also improve security of both sides. Ukraine will stop being vulnerable to Russian incursions and Europe will become bigger and its negotiation position with other international players will be stronger.

One last issue that remains are people who ended up on the wrong side of the East-West divide. There are some pro-Russian people left in Odesa and Kharkiv, on the other hand there are many pro-European people in Russian occupied areas as well as in Russia's core lands itself. 

A population swap should be arranged so that those who want to live in Europe could move to Ukraine while those who want to live in Russia could move there instead. Anti-Putin Liberals from Russian occupied areas as well as from Russia itself can take place of pro-Putin Eurasians in Odesa and Kharkiv.

Ultimately differences between different parts of Ukraine can only be solved by a fair division so that each side of the geopolitical divide can get their own country and move towards their desired objectives. Then each side can finally stop fighting tug of war and start building its future.

Hopefully these objectives can be achieved in the coming peace talks or at the very least on the ground. Glory to Ukraine.

Maximalism in Post-Soviet Politics

One problem in politics in Soviet and post-Soviet space in its maximalism. This is a problem that equally affects both government and opposition alike. Both sides want complete and unconditional victory with no concessions to their opponents. This escalates any disagreement into an all-out conflict to the death or exile of one of the opponents. 

All that lead towards polarized and bitter society where group on top spends all its efforts on maintaining their grip on power and all others constantly plot taking them down. This constant Mexican stand off or battle royale keeps everyone on edge. All time, energy and resources are spent on infighting with nothing left to spend on improvement of life. All that lead to horrible living conditions, emigration, brain drain and leaves the countries in perpetual underdeveloped limbo between 1st and 3rd world.

It begun with Communists who were extremely maximalist in their agenda, offered no compromises. At first it allowed them to dispose the landlords and give land to peasants. However later this very same maximalism led towards countless purges. Millions have died, many of them were some of the best people in the country who died because people in power were afraid of losing their power to someone better. Eventually incompetent geriatrics run what was left of USSR into the ground.

Now most of the post-Soviet world repeats this mistake in their now independent parts of former USSR.

In countries of Eurasian Economic Union and to lesser extend the rest of CIS jails or kills any and all opposition who could reasonably challenge its grip on power. Government bureaucrats, police and connected fat cats hog up all the money in national budget, leaving everyone else in the country cold and dry. 

All this unites the entire nation against its government. It goes to such extremes where people vote for a President who literary killed onscreen the entire parliament because MPs refuse anti-corruption measures and intend to keep misusing budget funds to pay for their Maldives vocations.

I understand people's outrage. It is wrong when government officials cannot find money in the budget to afford medicine or fix literary anything, but somehow always have enough to afford mansions and Mercedes Maybach cars. That is enough to think that only extermination can fix them. 

However, getting rid of all politicians is equally maximalist agenda. It pushes bureaucrats and police to ally themselves with the current regime (dictator) and defend them like their life depends on it, because it almost literary does. This is the only reason why Putin or Lukashenka are still in power.

Government united against their own people and people equally united against their government is not a recipe for a prosperity or development. However, no one is willing to walk away from the confrontation because people in government have everything to lose and ordinary people have everything to gain. 

Bitter struggle for power between government and people lead to so called colored revolutions. They do not happen because of Soros or Americans. They happen because of how post-Soviet countries are.

In contrast to confrontational approach of post-soviet countries, politics in the West are a lot more collaborative and compromise seeking. Back in early 20th century where Bolsheviks overthrew the bourgeoisie, British Labour found compromise with the business. 

As much as business leaders dislike trade unions, they negotiate with them over working conditions and salaries. Both sides get something of value from these negotiations and both sides continue their work together. In the end business need workers to work various jobs for them. Workers too need somewhere to work. 

Delicate balance makes sure both sides have vested interest in continued collaboration. Give too much power to business and workers will lose the insensitive to do any actual work. People will quit or do Italian strike to avoid getting anything done. The result will be stagnant dysfunctional economy where nothing ever gets done, just like in USSR.

Give too much power to workers and unions and businesses will decide to close or sell. That too will lead towards stagnation, but due to lack of investment (influx of money).

Politics too are filled with compromises. In Western Liberal Democracy losing power does not mean losing wealth, exile, going to prison or even losing life. That is why politicians meet defeat with little more than upset. Life continues, there will be election again, meanwhile parliamentary salary will afford decent lifestyle just as before.

In post-Soviet state dictators cling to their offices like their lives depend on it and it often does. Most former post-soviet dictators live in exile and hope their host country will not enforce the arrest warrant, their successors in power issued for them. If that is what awaits you if you lose power, then you might as well order riot police to beat the protestors instead of conceding defeat. That act will of course further alienate people from you, and they will demand ever harsher punishment for your misuse of power against peaceful citizens, thus pushing you further into bunkering up. However, even if they cannot overthrow you then and there, people will continue to fight back secretly or from exile, and circle of hatred will continue.

You can do the western thing and reach a compromise where everyone gets enough value out of work to keep them motivated to keep going. Else you will keep chasing thieves, traitors, foreign agents and other such enemies of the state/people to no end, while actual work will stagnate and country further and further falling behind. 

People ultimately selfish creatures. They will always look after their own self-interest. They will get money for their Maldives vacation even if they have to destroy your entire motherland to do so. If that is the case, why not just pay them enough so that they can afford Maldives without any complex corrupt schemes. That way they will have enough energy and time to do something for the country as well.

To make people do something for a country or common prosperity there should be system that rewards them financially for their effort. Cheap propaganda or patriotic brainwashing will not make anyone smart enough to make a difference to actually put any effort into anything. Only idiots will work that way, and their idiotic efforts will lead to equally idiotic results.

Hopefully post-soviet states will manage to find their way out of this circle of hatred and constant animosity. 

Humanity evolved from apes because of their ability to build alliances and coalitions. One ape cannot take down a mammoth, but many can. However, insensitive are needed for many to work together. They will not do it for nothing, they will only do it if rewards are high enough. 

Just like pre-historic people, modern humanity created NATO and other organizations for the sake of common good. Whatever mammoth still oppose them, will not be likely to survive long. In the end it was Russian behavior that pushed eastern Europeans to join NATO. Russia shoot itself in a foot, making the same mistake, Poland-Lithuania did 200 years prior. Back then coalition of Russia, Prussia and Austria took Poland-Lithuania down. Modern Russia have forgotten its lessons from back then.

On Moralism and Ethics in Politics

 

To me anti-Trump hysteria was always baffling. Sure, you might oppose different politicians for various reasons, you might even lie to help your side win. However, things, Trump opponents say about him go much further than that. Listening to them make you think they are raving mad. Donald Trump is intelligent person who can think outside of the box and create original solutions. He is unconventional sure, but he is nor retarded, nor he is nazi or a dictator. Yet his numerous opponents will not shut up about how Donald Trump evil and what not. That raises question: why?

The answer is moral and ethics. Whenever some raving mad psychos condemn someone to be evil incarnate with self-righteous indignation, these two things are to blame. 

Trump is objectively better than Hillary Clinton or Kamalla Harris, but Trump is unethical and raving mad moralists yell on every corner how we should elect one of these unelectable women over the unethical dude who is objectively better. If you disagree, they call you deplorable and try to cancel you.

However, if voting for Hillary is the only ethical choice, they ethics themself are evil. They preclude you from voting for your best choice in favor of a bad one. Ethics is merely a tool to make people vote and act against their self-interest.

Who does ethics serve them. Your enemies: Russia, women, elderly. Evil people created ethics to justify their evil and unfair dealing. They steal from you, put a yoke on your neck and call it ethics.

In view of all that it is truly fortunate that in the US election reason and logic prevailed over ethics and moral. Good people have won. Raving mad moralists were defeated.

However, the very fact that moralists managed to get this close to power is alarming. We were dangerously close to moralistic dictatorship, where some sort of unelected, undemocratic and illiberal ethics committee gets to dictate everything. Dystopian worlds of 1984 or even Shinsekai Yori were close to being implemented in our own world and lives. 

Trump election in the US is not the only example of a similarly ethically charged contest. Yeltsin in Russia was a similar example. Yeltsin had to navigate dangerous times and fix the country and economy, broken by communists. It was a job someone like Putin would be completely incapable of. Yet despite Yeltsin managing it, raving mad commies kept calling him a bandit and demanded his resignation. Moralistic loonies even ally literal neo-Nazi to take Yeltsin down and failed. Even nowadays the moralists keep kicking this now dead lion, who was too manganous to squish them when he was in power.

Another, perhaps less dramatic example, was Ronald Reagan. Certain section of the left keeps blaming him for everything even nowadays. All that despite the fact that Reagan won his reelection with record high vote.

All that gives hope that really good politicians who represent silent majority and not the raving mad yelling ethics zealots can take power and make life better for us all.

However ethical and moralistic evil always lurks around the corner and plot to once again seize power and do evil, while calling it ethics. Their existence makes me fear for the future and liberty of our society. 

On Syria

 

Big event this month that I have not written about yet was Assad's regime collapse in Syria. The reason I did not write about this is because regime collapsed very abruptly as well as ambiguity of the actual control on the ground. 

HTS rebel group that took over had some ties with Al-Qaida, but not anymore. That still leaves the question of what they stand for or who supports them. Maybe it is Turkey, maybe it is Saudi Arabia, maybe they are free from everyone. In the past, they occasionally fought other rebels over various disagreements. Possibly they did not want to share power. At the same time, they also united with and absorbed many other rebel groups. Pragmatic inconsistency of their action reminds me of Lelouch and Black Knights. 

I wonder if HTS made some deals with some people in Assad circle or even with Russia itself to ger where they got. If they made any deals, then the question is what the terms were and will they honor them when in power or not. As of now it still remains to see what the new government will bring in.

To make matters more complicated. Closer to fall of Damascus other rebels spring into action as well and took control of parts of the country. It was unclear if they will work with HTS or not. Recently HTS announced that they reached some deal with them to integrate into new government. I think that addresses the so-called Southern Operation Room group, that controlled areas south of Damascus. 

Finally, there was issue of transitional government, but later news all confirms that HTS government of National Salvation from Idlib will be fulfilling this role.

That only leaves Turkish backed FSA in the north, SDF in northeast and a commando army on Jordan border supported by Americans who took Palmyra. 

The problem with FSA, is that it consists of rebels, who got on the bad side of HTS. Many of FSA fighters were likely expelled from Idlib by HTS. It is unlikely they will work with HTS voluntarily unless Turkey pressures them. 

Some claim that Turkey supports HTS just as much as FSA, if that is the case then Turks will likely use FSA to fight Kurds from SDF and then force them to accept the HTS as their new rulers. However, if Turkey is not HTS supporter, then FSA controlled north, and Turkish occupation will continue, and it will be hard for HTS to remove it.

American backed commando army is too small, not very battle ready and plagued with corruption. They will possibly intergrade with new regime, if they will get some assurances from HTS about their future policies. 

That leaves Kurds from SDF as the only major question. HTS and SDF might not be able to find ways of cooperation and thus a new round of civil war will ensure.

There are all the unknows that we know of. Let's hope that Syria has a bright future ahead of it.

I will finish on a good note. Assad's tyrannically regime is gone, people he unfairly imprisoned are now free. He no longer has capacity to use Zarin gas to mass murder. This is a great victory for liberty loving people everywhere in the world.

Assad himself went to dictators' favorite safe haven: Russia, where he will join Yanukovych, Abashidze and many others, who are hiding there from justice. Russia, country that created Assad and many others like him still stands and attempts to spread its evil across the globe. Hopefully some good rebel group will one day take Moscow and put an end to this evil at its core. As bad as Assad was, he is but Putin light. True evil remains and only gets worse.

Hopefully freedom will prevail.