Adventures in Soviet bureaucracy – US Department of Defense edition
He probably didn't fight for freedom and he DEFINITELY didn't know how to run a bureaucracy
I’m generally a pretty cynical and sarcastic person who understands that humans are capable of essentially limitless mendacity, stupidity, and cruelty: it takes quite a lot to shock me. One of the few things in graduate school that I really had a hard time comprehending, in fact something that I might still not truly comprehend, came up in my class on Soviet defense when we were talking about the military spending burden: the Soviet leadership did not know how much the country spent on national defense.
Oh sure the Politburo had a rough idea of military spending (“a lot!!!”) and, yes, somewhere there was a “budget” that had some notional (and ludicrously inaccurate) number of rubles assigned to it, but due to pervasive secrecy, the needless over-compartmentalization of information, and, more than anything else, the distorting effects of non-market price signals* it was literally impossible to work out the exact budget of the Soviet armed forces. The greatest deal of specificity that anyone has ever been able to arrive at are estimates within a range of +/- 3% of GDP which, when you stop to think about it, is not very specific at all (as a hackish example imagine if, in the United States, the government could only say ”Federal spending is somewhere between 34 and 40% of GDP). For comparison’s sake the entire Soviet healthcare budget was roughly 2.5% of GDP, which means that the margin of error for defense spending was greater than the entire budget spent caring for the health of Soviet citizens; that is what it means to be a “low priority” sector in a command economy.
What got me started on this rant was Glenn Greenwald’s typically excellent analysis of an atypically excellent Washington Post report on the terrifying expansion of the national security apparatus, particularly the massive and unprecedented use of contractors for core national security functions. Greenwald highlighted a passage from the Post that should have any genuinley patriotic and/or freedom loving Americans quivering in fear or making plans to move to Canada (emphasis added):
Making it more difficult to replace contractors with federal employees: The government doesn’t know how many are on the federal payroll. Gates said he wants to reduce the number of defense contractors by about 13 percent, to pre-9/11 levels, but he’s having a hard time even getting a basic head count.
“This is a terrible confession,” he said. “I can’t get a number on how many contractors work for the Office of the Secretary of Defense,” referring to the department’s civilian leadership.
Just take a step back and think about that for a second. Since 9/11 the US Federal government has spent trillions of dollars and fought numerous wars that have killed tens, if not hundreds, of thousands of people all in order to “keep Americans safe.” Yet that same government literally cannot say how many people it is employing in this effort (which is very clearly its highest-priority): it does not actually know how many people are being given taxpayer dollars to find and destroy terrorists.
The problem cuts far deeper than a simple failure in human resources management which could, presumably, be rectified by some deck-chair reshuffling and investment in IT infrastructure. As part one of the Post series noted (emphasis, as always, added):
In the Department of Defense, where more than two-thirds of the intelligence programs reside, only a handful of senior officials – called Super Users – have the ability to even know about all the department’s activities. But as two of the Super Users indicated in interviews, there is simply no way they can keep up with the nation’s most sensitive work.
“I’m not going to live long enough to be briefed on everything” was how one Super User put it. The other recounted that for his initial briefing, he was escorted into a tiny, dark room, seated at a small table and told he couldn’t take notes. Program after program began flashing on a screen, he said, until he yelled ”Stop!” in frustration.
“I wasn’t remembering any of it,” he said.
Now as I tried to make clear in my brief, superficial, and utterly hackish overview of the problems associated with the Soviet economic system, the United States cannot be straightforwardly compared to the Soviet Union because, at the end of the day, its costs (while massive) can actually be accounted for: since the Federal government purchases goods and services in the confines of a market economy, and since prices are more or less freely determined by participants in the market, one can say with a fair degree of precision how much it is spending.**
That being said, the parallels between the bloated Soviet defense sector and the bloated US national security state are obvious, striking, and terrifying. Note the overabundance of information, the massive resource expenditure, the pervasive secrecy (even people who had been through the most rigorous and extensive security screening the government can muster were not allowed to take notes during briefings, which reminds me of how during negotiations over the original START treaty the Soviet military delegation made the Soviet diplomatic delegation leave the room because they ”weren’t allowed” to hear any of the technical specifications of Soviet missiles ), the extreme redundancy, and the remorseless compartmentalization of vital data. As Matthew Yglesias, among others, has noted this is a pretty horrific way to run an organization and the only sure way to reform the damned thing is through the one avenue that it will absolutely never accept: by limiting secrecy and opening up information flows.
One can always overdo historical comparisons, people probably started making inflated comparisons to the decline and fall of the Roman Empire while the ashes of the forum were still smouldering, but it is, to say the least, very dismaying to see large parts of the US government become every bit as inefficient, compartmentalized, and opaque as the Soviet Union. Now since the US is a vastly wealthier, more democratic, and more liberal society than the Soviet Union, and since it spends a significantly smaller portion of its national income on the military, there are reasons to hope that things can be salvaged before they truly get out of hand. However the utter indifference of the American public to the sweeping expansions in state power seen over the past decade, and the complete lack of public protest at the fact that the defense budget will continue to grow as virtually all other sectors are subject to freezes and or cuts, suggest that it will take quite a lot to rouse them from their slumber.
*Since the Soviet economy was command-administrative in nature there were no market prices. Thus it was practically impossible to work out what things “really” cost because resources were allocated by government fiat. “Rubles” were simply accounting devices, not a real currency, because they could only buy goods approved and distributed by the state planning authorities. Thus, because it enjoyed high priority, a defense industrial enterprise could use, say, 1,000 rubles to “buy” 2 tonnes of steel, but a construction firm building a, low-priority, hospital might have to pay 2,000, 3,000, or even 7,000 rubles to buy the exact same steel or, more likely, and in the unlikely event that there was actually any steel left after all the defense and heavy industries had taken their share , to buy steel of a noticeably inferior and defective quality. Capitalism certainly has its flaws, but market prices are an absolute prerequisite if a society is to avoid massive and potentially catostrophic misallocations of capital.
** Another major difference between the United States and the Soviet Union, one that I cannot hope to cover in any sort of depth within the confines of a single blog post, is the role played by Communist Party organs which were constructed in parallel with state organs and expressly tasked with “monitoring” (controlling) their work. Thankfully the United States has no equivalent to these (we don’t have a Republican or Democratic Party-run intelligence agency whose only job is to monitor the CIA) though give the absurd redundancies of the intelligence community our system probably isn’t a great deal more efficient.
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As long as the United States maintain its status as the world’s leading military power (with bases spread across the globe), the world would silently agree to buy more and more dollars (== agree with the increasing U.S. national debt).
May be it’s a sort of a widespread myth or anything, but a number of people here in Russia agree with that point.
(Possibly you have heard about critical voices from Russia (most notably, the “Avanturist”) who predicted with charts and numbers that the economy of the United States is destined to collapse as long as the 2009.
That didn’t happen, and the major reason why Avanturist was wrong was that he didn’t take into account the military power of the United States.)
Again, possibly that’s just a myth forged in conversations with the local people. For me, any explanations not based on exact mathematical models are the voodoo magics.
— Capitalism certainly has its flaws, but market prices are an absolute prerequisite if a society is to avoid massive and potentially catostrophic misallocations of capital.
The thing is that one can’t even possibly imagine “life without market prices”, because capitalism is, well, the dominant approach, even more so after the collapse of socialist block.
But. I was reading (although superficially) some vague theories about what exactly led to the collapse. Of course, one of the reasons was the evern-growing military budget and also the growing margins of the errors in planning and inert reactions towards the needs of society.
And in one article I found myself a very fitting (for my education and beleifs) explanations: planning. Soviet economy relied heavily on exact planning and mathematical approach to production, which was basically impossible at the dawn of the computer era.
I’m more than certain that if we wintessed the “singularity” (kind og) produced by computational technologies during USSR period it would have stood.
After introducing myself into econometrics and mathematical programming I’m even more inclined to beleive it would’ve worked for USSR economy.
Oh, and lastly… We’ll be back.
There is a book called Towards a New Socialism, written in the early 1990’s, which basically argues that truly scientific planning became feasible thanks to developments in IT just as the USSR collapsed. Quite an irony.
I do agree with this; it makes intuitive sense. The primary problem of the central planner is the lack of information. With today’s information infrastructure, databases, data mining techniques, surveillance systems – a centrally planned economy may well be potentially more efficient than markets.
In response to another comment. See in context »Anatoly,
unfortunately, that’s a fallacy. The concept that implementation of modern computing technologies could have saved the Soviet economy is often cited by Soviet sympathizers. First of all, the Soviet leadership recognized the problem and tried new ways in that direction. For example, AVTOVAZ was fitted out with a powerful computing center (by the way, the evil archvillain Berezovsky worked there, he acquired a lot of useful connections among AVTOVAZ top management that way). But all the modernizing initiatives were drowned in a bureaucratic struggle.
But they could never solve the problem of overwhelming complexity that Gosplan faced. The complexity of planning grows exponentially with an increase of the produced goods number. Even today, when I have in possession several computers, each of which at least equals the one that put man on Moon, this idea is a distinct utopia. For example, every big corporation today uses a distant analogy of the planning system the Soviets used. But even they, with all modern computers, can’t digitize all information flows effectively. I guess it’ll take an AI to make this system work, so it’s clearly a matter of the distant future.
Besides, the Soviet economy was plagued by the problem that no computer could solve: devastating corruption in a distributing sector. The deficit in consumer goods was artificially created. That allowed unimaginable profiteering of everyone involved in the Soviet trade system (hence the active dislike for the Soviet trade workers). A whole national republic could reap nice profits if there was some state-level factory producing a “deficit” commodity.
Stalin suggested a very interesting solution. He implemented a working system that used both planned and market economy. (YES, MARK!!! Stalin and a market economy, you can reach for your rotten tomatoes now) There were fixed prices on the limited number of essential goods and commercial enterprises, like restaurants (famous “Astoria” comes to mind) and kolhoz markets. You all must have heard propaganda stories about how some kolhoznik donated a hefty sum on a creation of a personalized tank or aircraft.
In response to another comment. See in context »http://ru.wikipedia.org/wiki/Фонд_обороны
Well, that’s not a lie. The trick was that a common worker couldn’t afford commercial prices. Only a hadful of citizens earned enough: most productive workers, prominent scientists, managers and bureaucrats. The main principle was privileged goods for privileged citizens, a planned economy for the rest. This nicely worked as an incentive for productive labour and career growth. If I remember correctly, it was Khruschev who put a stop to that system. He supported a wide standardization of consumer goods and universal planning. So, unknowingly, he layed a brick in the foundation of the USSR’s demise.
Oh, I don’t even know where to begin complaining…
First of all, people in the West have a very vague concept of a planned economy. The theoretical basis of the Soviet economy was the labor theory of value. It wasn’t completely alien to the market economy, as it often gets portrayed. The two key differences are:
1. A deficit or a surplus has no bearing on a price of any resource. Any factual discrepancies between the produced amount and the planned amount were corrected in the next plan. All prices were based exclusively on the cost of labour to produce some resource.
2. Fully discretionary allocation of all resources. It was basically possible to provide food for all people, and to direct all the other resources, for example, on space exploration. Even if people desperately wished for jeans and bubblegum. Also quick redistributions were possible, allowing the military mobilization of the economy when the military spendings were raised from 19% to over 50% in 1941. That was the key factor in the victory of 1945.
All its advantages were mitigated by its weaknesses. The Soviet planned economy worked wonders when tasked to produce a limited number of goods (steel, cast iron, typified cars). The rapid industrial development after the Revolution and the restoration of economy after WW2 are excellent examples. Gosplan managed to provide a stably high growth rate then. But the Soviet economy floundered when a more complex economy was required, with a diverse number of produced goods, due to difficulties in planning. Also the Soviet economy was much more closed and mostly relied on itself, compared with any market economy.
I think that study and reassessment of the Soviet economy could provide huge help in solving present and future economic problems.
“Thus, because it enjoyed high priority, a defense industrial enterprise could use, say, 1,000 rubles to “buy” 2 tonnes of steel, but a construction firm building a, low-priority, hospital might have to pay 2,000, 3,000, or even 7,000 rubles to buy the exact same steel or, more likely, and in the unlikely event that there was actually any steel left after all the defense and heavy industries had taken their share , to buy steel of a noticeably inferior and defective quality.”
I’m sorry, Mark, but that’s just a drivel. All the prices were fixed. The priority of the defense sector was in the following practice. If the amount of produced steel was lower than planned then inferior sectors received less steel and their output was cut.
Kovane,
The prices were fixed but, since they were fixed, they could be easily manipulated, often post facto. I’m sure you’ve heard of the “heavy ruble” that defense industrial enterprises had, right? A “defense ruble” was anywhere from 2-7 times as powerful as a “civilian ruble,” which was one of the primary ways that the leadership kept the published defense burden so ludicrously low. Of course I also specifically said that the ruble was an “accounting device” and not a real measure of value because, in the end, all resources were ultimately distributed by government fiat.
As for your contention that the Soviet economy wasn’t “totally alien” to a market economy I suppose I’d agree (things like “price” and “supply” and “demand” exist in any economy they’re just manifested in different ways, i.e. the “low” price of soviet good was often raised significantly through long lines and pervasive shortages ) but since you admit that “All prices were based exclusively on the cost of labour to produce some resource” (which is not strictly accurate, a good number of prices were just invented out of whole cloth by the Gosplan bureaucrats) we can at least agree that the Soviet economy was very, very, different from an economy in which prices are determined primarily through supply and demand.
Believe it or not I actually studied quite a lot about the structural characteristics of command economies. If you ever want me to bore you to death describing the quantity drive or the shortage model I’d be happy to oblige
In response to another comment. See in context »Mark,
of course, manipulations and distortion were endemic to the Soviet economy. Every company (if that is a correct term) had a plan department which did their best in lowering plan requirements, as fulfillment of the plan was crucial to the management’s careers.
As far as I know the distortion of military spending was achieved by ascribing some military companies to a civilian sector. All the prices were fixed and reviewed in the next plan period. All the changes were made by using swarms of economic indices (labour productivity, a yield on capital investment, a rate of surplus value) and tedious harmonizations between different Gosplan departments.
“which is not strictly accurate, a good number of prices were just invented out of whole cloth by the Gosplan bureaucrats”
You’re right, but that was done strictly for accounting purposes. The labor theory of value is a Marxist concept and it was really enshrined in Gosplan. Prices in a market economy are the main conveyors of economic information, while in a planned economy such a function is conducted by factual deficits/surpluses be the end of a plan period.
Believe it or not, but I happen to be an economist and I spent my best years studying all this crap among other subjects. So I definitely would like to hear the opinion of such a knowledgeable man like yourself. Especially since you represent the “other”, Western school of thought.
In response to another comment. See in context »Kovane,
I honestly did not know that the labor theory of value played much of a role in Gosplan’s planning activity. I knew it was an important part of communist ideology and propaganda, but if the poor chinovniks were really making resource allocations based primarily on the quantity of labor necessary to produce a good…well, then Soviet history makes a great deal more sense.
I’ll try to do a proper post about this sometime in the next week or so, as it’s somewhat tangential to this topic and it’s been awhile since I’ve had to brush up on my Kornai
In response to another comment. See in context »Hey, guys, this is a fascinating discussion: please continue. I would like to learn more.
It used to be a favourite go-to phrase of mine, back when we used to argue about fundamental differences between the Soviet Union and the United States, that the Soviet Union did not have to account for its expenditures to the taxpayers, because it simply appropriated whatever it thought was necessary at source. The inspiration for such discussions back then was usually military intelligence: if you wanted to get a photograph of the screws on the TYPHOON while it was being built, for example, you’d have to have an agent in place who would have to risk his life to get the information for you. If you wanted a similar photo of the LOS ANGELES during construction, you could simply send a letter to Electric Boat, and they’d mail you a brochure – you could get a staggering amount of detail from Janes Fighting Ships, which was for sale to anyone who had the money. All, according to my philosophy, because the United States had to account to the taxpayer for the money it took from them and spent on their behalf while the Soviet Union did not.
That philosophy seems a little naive now, but it’s not as if the United States government NEVER had a handle on who worked for them and how much it cost. Americans put a premium on having the world’s most powerful military, so a little fudging was always allowed, but the mission of National Defence was once much more straightforward than it is now. Also, layers upon layers of security have since been added, most with their own oversight authority, mostly as a consequence of 9-11 and the obsessive outgrowth of interest in knowing who was watching the watchers. Programs like TIA were officially “killed”, which is to say their funding was cut off, but their databases survived and were merely imported to other even more secretive programs.
No obsession for knowing every tiny dirty little sordid secret of your own people can end well. The United States is an information alcoholic, and just can’t get enough.
Russia took all their spies back except one…..
Ahem (conspicuous cough…)
Returning to the “labor theory of value”, can someone please explain this to me and, if you think the theory is wrong, could you explain why? Full disclosure: I never studied economics (I’m not proud of that fact), but I do remember in my youth being compelled to study some basic Marxist theory. I also tried to read “Das Kapital”, but that sucker was too big and too thick for me to understand. I do recall that Marx had predicted the eventual collapse of the capitalist system based on something called the “declining rate of profit”. Capitalist governments despise Marx, of course, and they have their own theoretical giants to rely on. For example, Obama’s “stimulus” plan is apparently based on the theories of John Maynard Keynes, which seems to be something like “spend more to make more”. Unfortunately for Americans, it doesn’t seem like this is a correct theory? Returning to command economies, I grant that a full-blooded national economy is way too complex to be able to program from an array of computers. I’m a software developer myself, so I have a realistic view of what these machines are capable of…
Very crudely (as I would never in a million years be mistaken for an academic economist)
The labor theory of value states that the value of a good is directly related to the quantity of labor necessary to produce it. So, for example, something that takes 5 man hours to produce is “worth” a lot more than something that takes 2 man hours to produce (I don’t think the theory is always crude enough to say that the value of a good is directly correlated with the labor input, but there are probably some people who’ve argued that)
Needless to say this is an exceedingly stupid way of assigning value to goods as it doesn’t take into account consumer preferences (i.e. “demand’). There are all sorts of things that require a lot of labor to produce that aren’t worth very much because, among other reasons, the labor required to produce it is unskilled – think of the backbreaking labor needed to produce coal, lumber, gold and other sorts of raw materials.
Again, I don’t think you need to be a blind trumpeter of capitalism to understand that goods can only be worth what people will pay for them
In response to another comment. See in context »BTW, Mark, What was you majors/minors?
In response to another comment. See in context »I was a political “science” major and took a lot of Russian and history (and Russian history) classes. Harvard didn’t invent “minors” until my senior year when I was one (literature) class away from a minor in Slavic Studies. However I was writing a thesis at the time and there was no way to make the class scheduling work out. Oh, what could have been
In response to another comment. See in context »I have to say I truly envy your education.
“I was one (literature) class away from a minor in Slavic Studies.”
Oh, cool. Does that mean that we could cry over Dostoevsky’s characters together?
In response to another comment. See in context »Mark, I do understand your point about demand for a product. For example, I could slave obsessively night and day and spend 1000 hours building a giant birdhouse out of popsickle sticks. But in the end, alas, it wouldn’t be worth anything and nobody would want to buy it because, frankly, it just wouldn’t be very good.
In response to another comment. See in context »But surely a smart guy like Karl Marx would have taken that into account and only assigned value to intrinsically “useful” (and/or competent) labor? I don’t know, I’m just asking…
One of my few guiding principles in life: NEVER assume that Marx was right about something. I’m sure there’s some tortured apologetic somewhere on the internet purporting to defend the labor theory of value or arguing that it means something entirely different from what Marx said it meant but (as your own example makes clear) the amount of labor involved in the creation of a good is completely and utterly beside the point. No one really cares how much labor goes into a product, they care about the product’s usefulleness and quality. The labor centricity of Marxism, exemplified most clearly by the labor theory of value, was one of its biggest and most crippling flaws.
In response to another comment. See in context »yalensis, allow me to step in and defend poor Marx. He is definitely the most misunderstood and dragged through the mud economist ever.
As you correctly pointed out, nobody cares how much you have worked on the giant birdhouse. Maybe you’ll never sell it, or maybe some odd fellow will buy it for a couple of millions. Only real demand, supported by available money, matters here. That’s what marginalism teaches us. The labor theory of value has nothing to say here, because it only works on a macro scale. Let’s take for example such a commodity like steel. In order to produce it, you need coal, iron ore and labour of steel mill workers. (well, and a steel mill itself, of course, but I leave it out for now). Coal and iron ore also can be represented as labour of miners. And all this labour can be expressed in money (i.e. wages). So, on a global scale the price of steel will be cost of labour (wages) + profit margin (which the evil capitalist takes). Of course, there are such things as global demand and global supply. And the real price fluctuates around our calculated value. (Which also can be changed, wages or the amount of profit could be cut). The main idea is this: nobody will continue to produce something when the price is lower than the costs. (which can be expressed in the amount of labour)
In response to another comment. See in context »yalensis, the labor theory of value is not wrong, it just describes only one side of the full picture. Here’s a small overview of different theories of value:
http://rudiplom.ru/lekcii/economika/ekonomicheskaya_teoriya/4_3.html
Marx indeed predicted the collapse of the capitalist system. He assumed that it would be harder and harder to earn new profit, so the capitalists would have to resort to more strong oppression of workers. Which already lived and worked in abominable conditions then. But crafty capitalists, maybe scared by the Revolution in Russia, decided to share a part of their profits with workers and to improve working conditions. (Henry Ford is an excellent example of such capitalist). So I guess all the workers should partly thank Russia.
Keynes is not about “spend more to make more”, Keynes is about preventing a credit crunch in times of crises. I think his ideas worked well in 2008, but they’re not supposed to solve all the fundamental problems of the American economy.
yalensis, as far as I understand, you’re interested in global politics, so let me recommend you to study basic economics. It will really augment your vision and improve your understanding of how things are working in the global economy. For example, this books:
http://www.amazon.com/Principles-Economics-N-Gregory-Mankiw/dp/0030259517
It’s also not thin, but very easily written, without any loss of educational value. You can find it online, by the way (if you don’t flinch from piracy
) It will be sufficient to lay a good foundation. A small disclaimer: I’m not affiliated with Mankiw in any way. 
Thanks, kovane, I’ll purchase the Mankiw book, since you recommend it. I’m a very lucky person, I have a good job, so I don’t think I’ll have to resort to piracy! Yes, I do have a burning interest in European/Russian politics and history, so obviously I need to bone up on economics too. Re. “declining rate of profit”, I believe I witnessed that first-hand at my last job. Our company’s top managers announced that it was getting harder and harder to squeeze out a profit margin for their product. The solution? We employees would all henceforth have to work 9 hours a day (instead of 8), but still only be paid for the 8 hours. Needless to say, I quit and found a new job where I only have to work 8 hours. But not everybody is able to do that; most employees have to just take whatever s*** is dished out to them!
In response to another comment. See in context »yalensis, I see you managed to witness what dirty capitalists are up to at first hand.
I have 5th edition of this book, I’m not sure if a newer version is around.
When I was a student and poor, like a church mouse, I used exclusively pirated software and foreign e-books. When I obtained some means to afford books I immediately bought everything I’d read and liked. Now I often download pirated e-books to familiarize myself with the contents and buy the ones I find good and useful.
In response to another comment. See in context »Dear Mark!
I’ve always read your blog whith a great interest, but now I have to agree with Kovane: your unerstanding of Soviet planned economics is too depthless (if not childly naive). Sorry, nothing personal.
Simply, your thesis about “heavy defense rouble” is such bullshit… Kovane tried to explain your mistakes from the theoretical angle, I’ll try to explain from the practical one.
Many years ago (when I was a teenager) I studied in something like your “technical college”. It was shipbuilding college. 3 days a week we have theoretical studies, other 3 days — was a “practice” and we worked (as low-skilled workers) at the one of the Leningrad (now Saint-Petersburg) shipyards. There was a “civil” part of the shipyard (where trawler, bulk-carriers etc. were build) and the “military” part (nuclear and diesel submarines, destroyers etc.).
And try to divine which part’s workers earned almost twice more money than their colleagues from another part? For absolutely same skill work!
It was usual practice. Science research institutes with “oboronnaya tematika” (military researches) was equipped more better, paid to their employee more money than “civil” ones.
Our army off-road trucks used 95-octane gas, when most of civil cars was satisfied with 76-octane (do you know what is it? Do you even listen about?
So, our “defense rouble” was LIGHTER than “civil” one. It was the only reason how we contrived to hold something about defense parity with such superior economics as US’s one was.
And try to belive in another “heresy” — the Soviet healtcare system was more better than current one is. May be it was even better than American. Not by the quality of course, but by the availability for EVERYONE. We made much more than “Obama’s healhcare reform” many years ago, and killed that system afterwards. Thanks to our “Libertarian teachers” from US.
You’ve had a more-than-healthy response, but I’ll add on to the conversation that it’s funny to see this discussion about excessive secrecy and waste in the American intelligence community going on literally at the same time as an identical debate heats up in Russia right now. By all means, compare the U.S. system to the Soviet behemoth, but we could also liken Russia’s current police infrastructure to America’s today.
The DoD doesn’t want (or simply cannot) explain how much money it spends on personnel. The FSB only yesterday disobeyed a direct presidential order to reveal the salaries of its staff. The official reasons are the same: national security and necessary secrecy. The unofficial reasons, which you unpack in this post, are probably that nobody fucking knows.
We have far more in common with the Russkis (or the Soviets) than anyone in Washington would like to admit — and maybe it’s another casualty of the cult of American exceptionalism — but Jesus Christ I wish we’d come to terms with how universal things like corruption and state “overreach” really are.
“but Jesus Christ I wish we’d come to terms with how universal things like corruption and state “overreach” really are.”
I am literally incapable of agreeing with you more. This is why sundry Russophobes like Ed Lucas, the “Streetwise Professor,” LaRussophobe, and Paul Goble send my blood pressure through the rood and make me want to rip my hair out, grab a club, and start bashing things like the ape-men in 2001 a Space Odyssey: they pass along stories that show Russian corruption, cruelty, and venality with the unbearably stupid (and to be honest usually unstated) suggestion of “look at those stupid, beastly, and primitive little Russians, their politicians [take bribes, lie, cheat, etc.]! Who does that sort of thing???”
Although demonization is fun, and we can surely all agree that the Russian state is a pretty nasty piece of work, I can’t get too excited by the fact that Russian infrastructure projects are crippled by corruption, or that their conscripts regularly have the crap beaten out of them: while unpleasant, these things doesn’t really impact my life. The fact that the US government is pouring, and will continue to pour, tens of billions of taxpayers dollars (borrowed from China, natch) down various ratholes in the name of “security?” That seems quite a bit more relavent and quite a bit more dangerous to my interests as a US citizen.
I just wish that some of the fearless “crusaders” against Russian depravity could turn a bit of their moral fervour towards the rot that has set in at the very center of the US government. Now I (all 5′5 of me) will be a starting NBA center before that happens, but a kid can hope can’t he?
In response to another comment. See in context »Comparing Soviet and American defense spending is tough. How do you compare the cost of a huge army of poorly paid Soviet conscripts with a smaller force of more expensive Americans (who were a lot better paid after the end of the draft)? Then factor in the Soviet construction regiments, border guards, NKVD/KGB troops, parade divisions, etc. (and maybe organizations like the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers on the other side).
Michael,
I know it’s tough and I tried pretty hard to make clear that a straightforward comparison is basically impossible for any number of reasons. But I think it’s quite instructive that the US national security apparatus has grown so vast and unwieldy that it is effectively ungovernable and unaccountable. That doesn’t make us the Soviet Union, but it certainly scares the crap out of me.
In response to another comment. See in context »[...] a little taste of Soviet bureaucracy click here. addthis_url = [...]
Maybe it’s an Americanism but when we say “one class away” it means I didn’t take it, so I’ve never taken a proper course on Russian literature at any level and it is really my one glaring weakness when it comes to the motherland (of course I have lots of intellectual weaknesses in general, but let’s not get started on that. I’d like to think, or at least pretend, that when it comes to Russia I’m pretty well covered except for literature).
I really ought to motivate myself to read more, but I’ve only ever really read a a few small short stories and novel fragments in Russian, and a decent bit of Checkov and Tolstoy in English-language translation.
I guess what I’m saying is that I could TRY to cry about Dostovesky’s characters but, unless we’re talking about the pawnbroker from “The Meek One,” I’ll just make a fool of myself.
It seems that Dostoevsky really had a thing about pawnbrokers. Considering that he was a a compulsive gambler, I bet that he had a few formative experiences with them. =)
Okay, I actually have a degree in Russian literature (not that I ever used it for anything), so now I can speak with some authority. Forget about Dostoevsky, he’s a madman; unfortunately for poor old Fyodor he lived in an age before they invented Prozac. It’s a proven fact that if you read too much Dostoevsky (especially if you’re a young man like yourself), then you will also go mad.
On the other hand, if you actually WANT to go mad and if you like really dark stuff that does not contain vampire characters, then by all means read Saltykov-Shchedrin’s “Gospoda Golovevy”, a psychological novel about the most dysfunctional family ever.
Or, if you like exciting military adventure stories, then please read Pushkin’s “Капитанская дочка”.
Anything Pushkin, it goes without saying: he’s the mother lode.
Something from the early Soviet period? Try Furmanov’s “Chapaev”. Early 20th-century, written in an experimental neo-modern style. Exciting battle scenes.
Wow, there are so many great Russian books to recommend, I could list hundreds, but I don’t want to bore you — happy reading!
Mark,
Reading must be interesting, you don’t need to force yourself like a high-school student.
Anyway, like with dating there’s no pre-defined answer, but you can only build your own way to the Russian literature.
Keep trying, until you feel that reading THIS particular book does really fascinate you.
I can propose you a couple of novellas of my personal choice.
The first is a 2002 science-fiction novella which focuses on the issues of governing a limited group of people driven by their emotions.
http://www.rusf.ru/gromov/books/book31.htm
The second is a mainstream novella about Communist purges in 1920s (written about the same time), which gives you an unforgivable first person view.
http://www.memorial.krsk.ru/memuar/Zazubrin.htm
The third is a 2004 science fiction novella, which essentially is a social satire about the modern Russian society:
http://lleo.aha.ru/arhive/fan2004/uho.shtml
But remember that the only thing you should force yourself to is to read the first 10 pages.
And oh, speaking seriously, did you try Bulgakov’s “Master i Margarita”? Normally it’s the only book that Russian high-school students enjoy to read.
Dostoyevsky was an epileptic, Prozac isn’t the right drug for him. Mad all the same though. Don’t think he has a single character that is even relatively normal. Far too popular outside Russia for some reason.
Thanks for the medical correction, olivegreen. I said I was a lit major, dammit, not a doctor!
Anyhow, I have a sinister Cold War theory for Dostoevsky’s popularity outside of Russia: For a period of some years, in Soviet times, Dostoevsky was, I won’t say “banned”, but certainly not encouraged or taught in lit classes, because, well, his demented characters and right-wing monarchistic ultra-Orthodox political views didn’t really really fit with the Soviet cultural concept.
Hence, because he was persona non grata in Soviet Union, Western academia figured he must be great guy, so he was taught to death in Western universities. Since Dostoevsky’s works do appeal especially to the darkness of the adolescent semi-schizophrenic mind during those formative years in college and early grad school, several generations of western students were raised on his works. And, actually, his novels are pretty good, if you like that sort of stuff. My personal favorite is “Идиот”.
But I don’t believe Mark Adomanis should be allowed to read Dostoevsky, his mind is still a vulnerable tabula rasa and should only be exposed to pretty images and nice people.
“Master i Margarita”[...] normally [is] the only book that Russian high-school students enjoy to read.
I second that, I liked it.
But I also liked “Мы” Замятина (http://az.lib.ru/z/zamjatin_e_i/text_0050.shtml)
It is a really WTF-book, but I liked it as a teenager and remember it quite vivdly.