Kamil Galeevさんのイラストまとめ

Stalin sided with the rightists against the leftists only to execute what the leftists had proposed once he took power. Many were shocked. Trotskyists were bitching that Stalin "stole their program"

(See Napoleon vs Snowball conflict in the Animal Farm. It's highly accurate)

I would argue that a defeat by Ukraine would have greater effect on Russia than any defeat by France could inflict on Spain/Portugal. Ukraine was never seen within Russia as an independent power, only as a separatist province populated by the inferior (if related) bumpkins

Author @Druddion

How can Putin make stuff?

Chinese-Russian alignment is much like Schroedinger's cat. It's alive and dead at the same time. Let me illustrate this on example of the Russian military industry, which contrary to the popular opinion is *not* backed by China. It's backed by Europe🧵

What was important for the Russian success or failure? First thing you should understand to identify anything truly important, is that Russian state is * very* procedural and algorithmic. Yes, it has non-procedural elements in it (that explains the place of Kadyrov in the system)

Lenin's refusal to characterise his revolution or his state as "socialist" makes total sense if we assume that he was a smart and genuine believer. According to his theory you couldn't jump through a stage of development. Thus backward Russia couldn't become socialist overnight

St Petersburg was not only a political, but also a logistic centre. When it was founded in 1703, it was the only Russian non-Arctic seaport giving access to the World Ocean. Delta of Neva divided it into a number of poorly connected areas without a single permanent bridge

No wonder that utopian plans of Russian aristocratic conspirators have always been super anti-German. For example, Decembrists who tried to overthrow the Romanov regime in 1825 had two major secret societies: the northern (constitutional monarchy) and southern (republicans)

Even more importantly, Russian state destroyed the idea of human dignity in Russia. Russian people interiorised the idea that they have no dignity of their own. Their dignity, their importance, their self-worth derived from their belonging (=submission) to the empire