Glimpses of the Multipolar World, 1 July 2023
Prigozhin. Parasites. Narrative Collapse. Atlantic Romantics. Hatred and Joy. Moriç and Duran. Thirteen Ways.
Each week in my newsletter, I offer seven glimpses of world history in the multipolar world. This week, I share glimpses of:
The Big Story. Prigozhin Affair.
Governing the Multipolar World. Parasite States.
Using History Mindfully. Russian Collapse Narratives Collapse in Time.
Fragments of the Burning Archive. Atlantic Romantics in Alliance.
What surprised me most. Shameless Hatred and Sheer Joy in Russia.
Gratitudes and Works-in-Progress. Hrvoje Moriç and Alex Christoforou.
Reading and Closing Verse. Thirteen Ways of Looking at a Blackbird.
Have you checked out my books?
my book of essays From the Burning Archive: Essays and Fragments 2015-2021.
my collected poems, Gathering Flowers of the Mind.
I have given Amazon links for convenience but these books are also available on Booktopia, Barnes and Noble, Kobo and other online retailers.
So, on with the newsletter….
1. The Big Story
The big story of the week was the mutiny of Yevgeny Prigozhin and a minority of his Wagner fighters. It flamed up and was snuffed out in 30 hours.
The true history of the Prigozhin Affair may not settle for years, until the archives of at least three countries are investigated. Already, historians and journalists are parading historical rebels from Russian history to frame the narrative, including the most enigmatic of all, the Pretender False Dmitri who claimed to be Ivan the Terrible’s murdered son and became Tsar in 1605.
The theories of what happened range from coup to pretence. My provisional interpretation is that this incident was a manipulated brew of breakdown, mutiny, protest, wild cat strike, and Western intelligence operation. The dispute between Prigozhin and the Russian Ministry of Defence has been brewing for months. About a month ago, it was administratively resolved with decisions to integrate private armies into Russian command. This spelled the end of Prigozhin’s power base, and his capacity to project himself as a national hero, without responsibility for command. His mind was already unsteady after months on the front, and then he received a termination date. He got desperate. Western intelligence agencies spotted an opportunity to influence Prighozin or his advisers. They encouraged protest at its outer limit. Events ran out of control. Prigozhin may have had a breakdown. He led a wildcat strike or domestic siege, not a coup. Western intelligence agencies amplified events as best they could. According to M.K. Bhadrakumar, the former Indian diplomat, Russian intelligence services monitored the whole affair, and knew they could defuse it.
The mutiny failed, but not without suffering. Twenty to thirty Russian soldiers died. Some citizens feared internal strife. With Russia’s history and memories, who would not? Russians remember the 1990s, in which Western shock therapy took a decade off life expectancy; the Russian Civil War (1918-22), in which millions died and Britain sent its soldiers and spies to make it worse; and the Time of Troubles (1604-13), in which Poles, Swedes, Catholics and Pretenders marched to Moscow, and the country was almost lost. They remember that first Russian civil war every time they see that statue in front of St Basil’s Cathedral.
The Russian state showed its prowess, and the Russian people their courage. A calm, capable government contained a domestic siege on a Saturday afternoon, without harming its citizens or its soldiers. It was the mutineers that did the killing. The civilian government emerged stronger. The real Opposition, the Communist Party, commended the government and condemned traitors and fifth columnists. The state upgraded its rules of engagement to a Counter-Terrorism Operation. International support rallied. Stability was preserved. NATO and Ukraine went on losing the war.
“Putin” (that tiresome personalised metaphor of the Russian state) won. Prigozhin was exiled and disgraced. The pretender soldier lost his fortune, and his power base. Wagner and its gear will go under regular military command. Prigozhin will go down in history as one of Russia’s least able Pretenders.
After a deep breath, the Russian people shrugged off the Prigozhin Affair. On Saturday morning, the street cleaners of Rostov-on-Don swept the gutters in front of the tanks. By evening, its citizens filled Wagner’s tank barrels with flowers. By night, the graduating students celebrated their education and maturity with the Scarlet Sails festival and the lyrics of Shaman’s song: Я русский, всему миру назло (I'm Russian, despite the whole world). Watch the video. It expresses pure joy.
Across the imaginary Atlantic, the story was not so good.
If American and British intelligence were involved, it seems they just cannot take a trick. Hersh worked out Nord Stream. The Kakhovka Dam story did not stick. The list of suspected interventions that failed has lengthened; since 2019, Belarus, Kazakhstan, Hungary, Nigeria, Turkey, and now Russia.
But the biggest losers were the Western media, experts and commentators on Russia. On Saturday, they unleashed their dogs of civil war in a bloody frenzy of mad predictions. ‘Rock-star’ historian Peter Frankopan claimed it “won’t be long at this rate” until there are defections of Russian officers in Ukraine. Malcolm Nance and Alexander Vindman were sure that Russian soldiers would soon execute their commanding officers like 1917. Michael McFaul proclaimed that there were “two armies in control of two different parts of the country.” Such wishful hate earned him a spot on ABC Radio National. Anne Applebaum screamed joyfully that the next Russian civil war had begun.
In Australia, there was a twitter storm because the ABC was not showing enough civil war porn. But its Global Affairs editor has earned a prime spot in Russian expert commentary on the Western media’s weekend spree of vile. Bob Carr thought Putin was about to push the nuclear button in pique. The Project invited the ambassador of Ukraine to comment on Russian internal affairs. No large Australian media outlets asked real local experts, such as Tony Kevin, or even the Russian Ambassador.
This ghoulish display of hatred and ignorance was aggravated by being proven so wrong within the 24 hours news cycle. Corrections? No. In fact, they went straight on to claim that clearly Putin is weaker, and this gives the NATO allies yet more (false) hope.
But an apology to Russia is surely required. This keyboard warrior cheer squad screeched their lies of civil war two days after the Day of Remembrance and Sorrow, which commemorates the launch of Operation Barbarossa by Germany and the Axis powers in 1941. It is time the Western media, expert and political classes looked into their hearts, and reflected on their hatred for “Putin” and Russia. Does it spring from the same vile well that launched Operation Barbarossa? If they do, they might learn Solzhenitsyn’s lesson on evil: the line between good and evil runs through every human heart.
Thoughtful people, however, have surely learned that Australian and Western commentary on Russian affairs in universities, media organisations, think tanks and government is irredeemably and dangerously broken. It is time to root out the evil that is Operation Cancel Russia.
2. Governing the unruly multipolar world
In Parasite State of Consultants I described how the public service and political order has been weakened by a growth of a loyal cadre of people promoted essentially through favour of the court. Francis Fukuyama, Political Order and Political Decay, describes this process that occurs in decaying political orders as repatrimonialisation.
In the article I wrote:
The vices exposed by the consulting firm, PWC, allegedly leaking confidential tax information, are not limited to one firm’s malpractice. The scandal is not merely the overuse of consultants or the misuse of the public service. The scandal has exposed a loose thread in how we are governed.
Good government is woven from a warp of institutions and a weft of culture. When the carpet is made well it flies, magically. When it is made cheaply, sold by carpetbaggers, and left to decay, it becomes a tawdry rag, infested with parasites. Our national, state and local governments now live in that smelly, stained carpet that we hide in the shed. They have become parasites on the state.
PWC has been exposed, allegedly, as one of those parasites. There is talk of criminal prosecution, and a lot of indignation at a Senate Committee. But, people who are concerned about the public service should not get carried away by treating one out-of-favour firm as a scapegoat. The sacrifice may only entrench the system that made the scandal. The rites may distract us from seeing deeper problems of political disorder.
A swarm of similar parasites, in the Big Four and other firms, feed on the body politic. A proper investigation would disclose other cases of misbehaviour that may have compromised the public interest. They certainly have sucked the life out of the public service for decades.
I have quite a few articles about this issue of political disorder in 13 Ways of Looking at a Bureaucrat, which I plan to release next Friday 7 July.
3. Using history to live mindfully in the present.
Vladislav Zubok wrote an article on Foreign Affairs making a historical comparison with the Time of Troubles, Russia’s major civil war of the early 1600s, and the political situation in Russia today.
It has the flaws of many historical articles penned this week. A fleet of historians were set out on the ocean of uncertainty to make the Prigozhin Affair into a portent of Russian collapse and the dark, violent ‘Russian soul’. But the mutiny fizzled so fast that the facts fell before the drafting was finished.
Zubok is the author of Collapse: The Fall of the Soviet Union. He would have seemed to the editors of Foreign Affairs the perfect historian Zubok to demonstrate the imminent collapse of the Russian Federation and the “autocrat, Putin.” So Zubok obliged with a big prediction probably penned before the domestic siege was resolved. Zubok wrote:
the Prigozhin affair has irreversibly changed the situation in Russia. ... What is taking place in Russia right now bears less resemblance to the events of 1917 than to those of an earlier era: the so-called Time of Troubles, or Smuta, which lasted from 1604 to 1613. During this period, the Russian dynasty of the Rurikids came to a violent end, and it took a decade of war and civil upheaval before the Romanov dynasty consolidated monarchical authority. In the meantime, Russia almost ceased to exist as a sovereign entity—a fate that could befall Russia again today because Putin’s personalized autocratic rule has made it hard to imagine an orderly succession.
Zubok is a more honest historian than some I have highlighted this week in my post, The 30-hour Prigozhin Protest: insurrection, protest, psy-op or breakdown?. His book, Collapse is brilliant, complex, and full of insight into the real fall of a political order. However, I wonder how his commentary on Russian affairs is influenced by his status as a long term emigre from Russia, dependent on the American academic-intelligence complex. Still, he must have gulped when events did not follow the plan of the editorial line. At least he was honest enough to admit this flaw about 500 words into the article:
What had seemed to be a drama that might culminate in Putin’s demise suddenly looked more like a farce.
Still he persisted despite the “uncertainty” of what was then certain fact, and presented the collapsing new buildings of the latest Western theory of Russian Collapse.
As it happens I know quite a lot about the Time of Troubles, and enough to see the faults in Zubok’s comparisons. You can listen to my podcast account of the history of this exceptional time in Episode 74, Russia’s First Civil War - The Time of Troubles and Two Murder Mysteries (November 2022.) The episode description is shown below.
In the early 1600's Russia suffered a traumatic civil war, political instability and social chaos. This period is known as the Time of Troubles. It left a mark on Russian political institutions and historical culture. But most of all it featured remarkable characters - the self-made Tsar, Boris Godunov; his sister, the first female ruler of Russia, Irina Godunova; and, most enigmatically of all, the claimant to the throne, known to history as False Dmitri. This story can only be fully understood, however, by investigating two murder mysteries, both involving the sons of Ivan the Terrible.
In preparing this episode, I used Chester Dunning, Russia's First Civil War: the Time of Troubles and the Founding of the Romanov Dynasty, and Mark B. Smith The Russia Anxiety, and how history can resolve it. They are brilliant books, do check them out.
Music - brief excerpts from Mussorgsky, Boris Godunov, Vienna Philharmonic
4. Fragments from the Burning Archive
My podcast this week continues my short world tour of the geopolitical oceans of the world, and looks at the Atlantic. I will discuss the historical text, the fragment from the Burning Archive, in part two next week. It will be the August 1941 Atlantic Charter that has framed so much of the narrative of World War Two and the Atlantic Alliance. You can read it here. Remember, despite all its encrusted myth, this charter of principles was signed by the USA government that had not yet entered the war, even though Nazi Germany had marched to the perimeter of Moscow and begun the 900 day siege of Leningrad.
On a lighter note, I feature in the podcast, for a bit of fun, the song Atlantic Romantic by the iconic Melbourne indie rock band, The Models. I had a lot of fun reconnecting with my 18 year old spirit, and playing with the associations between the lyrics and strains in the NATO alliance today.
5. What surprised me most this week.
I was surprised by the shameless hatred of so many against Russia. Richard Hanania is an American right wing twitter identity of a strange muscular variety. He issued a rebel yell from the American South that in effect called for the extinction of Russian culture, so by extension many Russian peoples, and its replacements with American W.E.I.R.D. supremacist culture. Russians With Attitude responded with a tweet that exposed this hateful speech for what it is.
In a personal case of groundless animosity, I learned that Matthew Sussex, supposedly a Russian scholar at ANU affiliated with all the national security types, has blocked me on Twitter. Wow! I have made it.
The antidote to this shameless hate is the sheer joy of these young people singing to Russian pop singer, Shaman, on their graduation. Please share the love.
6. Gratitudes and Works-in-Progress
I am grateful to Hrvoje Moriç for another great interview and to John Menadue, Aran Martin and the team at Pearls and Irritations for publishing Parasite State of Consultants.
This week my works-in-progress and published content were:
on the podcast I published Episode 107 Atlantic Romantics, Part I: Will NATO’s Special Relationship break up?
On the YouTube Channel I published a new format video of me walking and talking out by nearby Blackburn Lake. Thanks to Alex Christoforou of The Duran for inspiring the walking video. Did you like it?
I did an interview with Hrvoje Moriç on TNT radio about Prigozhin, the Ukraine War, bureaucracy and its connections to the parasite state.
On Twitter, I tweeted a lot about the situation in Russia, and the appalling commentary in the media. These tweets suggested ABC learn from M.K. Bhadrakumar to improve its reporting on Russia and received over 1,400 views.
Next week, I will be doing the final steps for the publication of 13 Ways of Looking at a Bureaucrat. On Monday I will be releasing the next instalment of my Sub-Stack series on the World Crisis, Political Disorder (full article is available to paid subscribers). On Tuesday I plan to release a video on Youtube explaining who are the five major powers of the today’s multipolar world (this one has a higher video editing requirement so could be the following week), or might do some shorts and another walking video. On Friday on the podcast I will release the first of a two part episode on the Atlantic, and plan to publish 13 Ways of Looking at a Bureaucrat.
7. What I am Reading and Closing Verse
I read many articles about Prigozhin and vile opinions this week. Time for a detox of the spirit next week, I think. Maybe poetry?
I close the newsletter with a stanza from a poem I have enjoyed during the week.
This week how better to close my newsletter than with a stanza from Wallace Stevens, Thirteen Ways of Looking at a Blackbird. It is the closing stanza, and reflects both the season of mid-winter and the closure of my book on bureaucracy.
It was evening all afternoon.
It was snowing
And going to snow.
The blackbird sat
In the cedar-limbs.
Next week you will be able to buy the book that meditates on this poem and my former life as a bureaucrat. Until then, take care, and stay sane.