Charles Clover

A few days ago, in an appeal broadcast across Russia and translated for the world, President Vladimir Putin justified his recent call up of an additional 300,000 Russian soldiers to join the patriotic fight to dismantle the independent state of Ukraine.

His immediate goal was to shore up support for his unilateral annexation of Eastern Ukraine provinces.

Putin claimed that the West hates Russians and took trillions of dollars out of the country at the close of the 20th century. Experts tell us that Boris Yeltsin, his cronies, and Putin after them stole roughly the equivalent of one-half of all the wealth possessed by Russians following the demise of the Soviet Union. An estimated US $800 billion.

Rewriting the history of Russia did not begin with Vladimir Putin, nor did Russian nationalism.

I recommend as a healthy playbook to Putin’s appeal to Russian patriots Charles Clover’s “Black Wind, White Snow: The Rise of Russia’s New Nationalism” published in 2016, after the Russian incursion into Crimea but before its invasion of mainland Ukraine.

Putin’s appeal to patriotism is confusing to the lay reader probably because it has many different roots in the Russian psyche.

Clover identifies four strains of the “new” Russian nationalism: an ethnic chauvinism or Pan-Slavism; Eurasianism, or a strategic block of nations willing and able to undo the hegemony of “the West;” Sovietism; and the Orthodox religious confessional.

Several of these strains appear in Putin’s speech and authoritarianism is a consistent theme in Russian nationalism and, indeed, in Putin’s speech.

A few weeks ago Russia was rocked by the apparent assasination of Darya Dugina by car bombing. Dugina was the daughter of Aleksandr Dugin, a longtime voice of Russian nationalism and confidante to Putin’s upper circle.

Clover follows the evolution of Dugin’s thought and influence, although he falls short in ascribing Putin present state of mind directly to Dugin’s most famous and controversial work “Foundations of Geopolitics.”

This is the Eurasionist school of Russian nationalism based on earlier suspect works of linguistics and philosophy, and political science.

What I find equally telling about the current brand of Russian chauvinism is the reliance on the Soviet experiment, when Russia reached the apotheosis of its world power.

In the early Soviet Union the communists attempted to co-opt the many nations encompassed by the Soviet Union. It was a time when over 200 languages were spoken in those lands and even Stalin couldn’t control them all without a little hanky-panky on the margins.(Probably more than a little.)

The assembly of the Soviet Union was the most blatant of many attempts to pacify the regions. Nationalism in that Russia was always a double-edged sword. The threat of violence breaking out was a consistent of the period.

Putin’s regime is based as much on clan politics as it has ever been in Russia. It features the settling of scores (witnesses the epidemic of oligarchs “falling” out of windows), and Murder Inc. tactics for opponents such as the poisoning of Alexander Litvinenko and the murder numerous journalists including Anna Politkovskaya.

According to Clover, Putin’s authority rests on his ability to problem-solve and adjudicate in elite disputes. In his Russia general collusion is a spectacle of awesome despotic power.

And there are few rules between the cliques and clans.

One of my favourite quotes in the book about the diffuse nature of power in Moscow is that “the Kremlin has many towers.”

I also found noteworthy in the outsize power of political spindoctors in the Kremlin. They are constantly polling the public. They are their own worst enemy. There’s a lot of “whatever the truth may be” thrown around at higher levels of the Kremlin. That can’t be good for any government needing to deal with the same problems yours and my government face every day.

And I’m sure some of those Kremlin spindoctors had a hand in this week’s speech. They want Russians to feel the guilt and debt owing to heroes long gone by, whether ethnic Russian, Soviet, or Orthodox.

Fail your country now and you fail it for all time.… (más)

A follow on to his book Fishing - the end of the line. Lots of examples of efforts to STOP FISHING in some patches of sea. There is lots of background information about the depletion of ALL fish stocks at the hands of industrial fishing. Rewilding, that is letting nature restore the oceans he feels is the only way forward and we need 30% of the oceans set aside for this, currently about 4%. Distant islands, like St Helena, Ascention and Da Cuna have gone for this, but the advanced countries take a lot of persuading. It seems that measures to conserve specific species or to permit catches up to feasible levels just do not work. Its a jungle out there on the high seas, every man for himself and they are all out there to make money. If they see a hole in the regulations they fish into it!
There is interesting stuff about some specific species and nations. The Chinese are really bad boys, closely followed by the EC, and then the trawlermen who seem to destroy wherever they go. Local fishermen, using rod and pole or small nets are often impoverished by the industrialists clearing out the ocean.
He starts off with the heartening news of the blue-fin tuna, but that is the last of the clearly good news. There are long descriptions of negotiations to set up the no-fishing agreements, and its obviously really hard work but after describing their setting up there is sometimes little discussion of the results. Perhaps its just too soon to say,… (más)

This book started out irritating me, and I think it was the brassy holier-than-thou attitude ("Tsukiji may be one of the few fish markets in the world that does not smell of fish... But Tsukiji stinks all the same, for its daily trade is pushing bluefin tuna daily closer to extinction" [p.34]). In the second chapter the author complains loudly about the trade in bluefin tuna (the western atlantic stock is listed as critically endangered, and the eastern atlantic stock is listed as endangered by IUCN) and then proceeds to have some bluefin tuna sashimi for breakfast. However, I started warming to him (despite his poor breakfast choices and awful Adrian Monk publicity photo) and did learn some interesting stuff about the world's fishing industries. Here's where I laughed out loud and genuinely started liking the book (he's talking about an unpublished paper about bycatch in the Spanish tuna fleet): "The observers also noted the scientific names, in Latin, of the species caught as bycatch. I looked up the common names with growing disbelief. It amounted to almost the entire cast list of Finding Nemo [he lists 5 species of sea turtles, 3 whale species including humpback, a great white shark, other sharks and rays, etc] On the bright side, they didn't catch any dolphins." [p. 211]. Ha!

Villains that I knew nothing about: the system (or lack thereof) of prosecution for infractions in the EU and in international waters. The entire government of Spain, apparently. Government initiatives in Canada and Scotland that purport to retrain fisherman and decrease fishing capacity but instead create salmon farms and people who are chronically underemployed.

Unlikely heroes: Unilever (owner of Birdseye and Gorton's), one of the original founders (with WWF) of the Marine Stewardship Council. Who knew? I think i'll buy more Birds Eye veggies next time I'm at the supermarket.… (más)