Chestnut Trees on the Thames: 2010

Friday, 1 October 2010

История Европы

Том 1. Древняя Европа
Том 2. Средневековая Европа
Том 3. Европа раннего нового времени (1492-1648)
Том 4. Европа в 1648-1789 гг
Том 5. Европа в 1789-1914 гг

International Library of Essays on Military History

Warfare in Early Modern Europe 1450-1660

The early modern period saw gunpowder weapons reach maturity and become a central feature of European warfare, on land and at sea. This exciting collection of essays brings together a distinguished and varied selection of modern scholarship on the transformation of war - often described as a 'military revolution' - during the period between 1450 and 1660.

About the Author
Paul E.J. Hammer has published extensively on Elizabethan politics and political culture, as well as on Tudor England and the waging of war. He is currently a Senior Lecturer in History at the University of St Andrews, Scotland, UK.

Hardcover: 468 pages
Publisher: Ashgate; (28 Jun 2007)
Language English
ISBN-10: 075462529X
ISBN-13: 978-0754625292

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Warfare in Europe 1650-1792

Scholars have tended to underrate the importance of war in the period 1650-1792, as there is a feeling that periods before and after were more consequential for military development. This collection of essays sets out to address this problem, probing the nature of warfare in Europe from the middle of the 17th century to the 18th.

Hardcover: 561 pages
Publisher: Ashgate Publishing Limited; (24 Jun 2005)
Language English
ISBN-10: 0754624641
ISBN-13: 978-0754624646

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Warfare in Europe 1792-1815

This collection of essays provides a broad strategic interpretation of European warfare from 1792-1815. Unlike traditional military histories which focus on a revolution in military affairs from the French view, this volume offers a general European perspective, placing the armies and the wars in historical context, while addressing substantive changes to respective military systems.

About the Author
Frederick C. Schneid is Professor in the Department of History at High Point University, USA.

Hardcover: 542 pages
Publisher: Ashgate (21 Sep 2007)
Language English
ISBN-10: 0754624714
ISBN-13: 978-0754624714

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Warfare in Europe 1815-1914

The history of nineteenth-century European warfare is framed by the end of the Napoleonic Wars in 1815 and the outbreak of the First World War in 1914. The Crimean War and the struggles for Italian and German unification divide this century in two. In the first half, armies struggled to emerge from the shadow of Napoleon amidst an era of financial retrenchment, political unrest and accelerating technological change. The mid-century wars left an equally problematic legacy, including aspects that pointed towards 'total war'. The 26 essays in this volume examine these changes from a variety of innovative and fresh perspectives.

About the Author
Peter H.Wilson is Professor of History at the University of Sunderland, UK.

Hardcover: 534 pages
Publisher: Ashgate Publishing Limited; illustrated edition edition (28 April 2006)
Language English
ISBN-10: 0754624781
ISBN-13: 978-0754624783

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World War I

Once-dominant images of the First World War as a futile contest fought by innocent soldiers and wasteful generals have given way to more sophisticated scholarly analyses. This volume presents some of the most innovative work of this new generation of research on the War to End All Wars. Taking a global and comparative perspective, these essays place the War in a wide global and thematic context, greatly enhancing our understanding of one of the most important and complex events of the 20th Century.

About the Author
Michael Neiberg is Professor of History and Director of the Center for War and Society at the University of Southern Mississippi, USA.

Hardcover: 604 pages
Publisher: Ashgate Publishing Limited; (28 Sep 2005)
Language English
ISBN-10: 0754624773
ISBN-13: 978-0754624776

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Warfare in Europe 1919-1938

Although ostensibly a time of peace, one of the richest and most fascinating periods in military history falls between the two world wars. With good reason, even today military theorists look to these years for relevant lessons. The articles and papers collected together in this volume highlight the major themes and developments of interwar military affairs in Europe, including the new doctrines of tank warfare, air power, German "Blitzkrieg", and Soviet operational art. They also demonstrate the important place of the major armed conflicts of the period, such as the Russian and Spanish Civil Wars, in European history.

About the Author
Geoffrey Jensen is John Biggs '30 Cincinnati Chair in Military History in the Department of History, Virginia Military Institute, USA.

Hardcover: 558 pages
Publisher: Ashgate; 5R edition (18 May 2008)
Language English
ISBN-10: 0754625192
ISBN-13: 978-0754625193

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The Second World War

The significant and sustained popular interest in the Second World War is matched by the scale and scope of scholarly engagement in the subject. The articles selected for this volume cover a wide range of topics reflecting the fact that the largest recorded war in history and the most intense period of global instability in the twentieth century, was fought by many different states, large and small, over differing periods of time and for many different reasons. In an area where there is no shortage of material to choose from, the articles presented here are distinguished for their depth of scholarship, stylistic elegance and inter-disciplinary confidence.

About the Author
Nick Smart is Senior Lecturer at the Department of History, University of Plymouth, UK, and has been writing on a number of Second World War related themes for some years.

Hardcover: 513 pages
Publisher: Ashgate; (20 Nov 2006)
Language English
ISBN-10: 0754625915
ISBN-13: 978-0754625919

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У якості бонуса

The Munich Crisis, 1938: Prelude to World War II (Diplomacy & Statecraft)

This text studies the Czechoslovak-German crisis and its impact from previously neglected perspectives and celebrates the post-Cold War openness by bringing in new evidence from hitherto inaccessible archives.

Most of the works on the crises of the 1930s and especially the Munich Agreement in 1938 were written when it was virtually impossible to gain access to the relevant archive collections on both sides of the Iron Curtain. This text studies the Czechoslovak-German crisis and its impact from previously neglected perspectives and celebrates the post-Cold War openness by bringing in new evidence from hitherto inaccessible archives.

Hardcover: 416 pages
Publisher: Routledge; 1 edition (30 Nov 1999)
Language English
ISBN-10: 0714649953
ISBN-13: 978-0714649955

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Thursday, 16 September 2010

The Second World War

World War II defined the 20th century and shaped the contemporary world; from the decolonization of Africa to the rise and fall of the Berlin Wall. This comprehensive series, edited by one of the worlds leading military historians, offers a focused overview of this complex and volatile era, taking into account the political, economic and social factors, as well as military circumstances of the road to war and its consequences. Augmented by a full length and detailed introduction by the editor, each volume gathers together the seminal articles on specific arenas of the war, providing a convenient and elegant tool for researchers and general readers alike.

Volume 1. German War 1939-1942
Hardcover: 570 pages
Publisher: Ashgate Publishing Limited; (21 May 2007)
Language English
ISBN-10: 0754626342
ISBN-13: 978-0754626343

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Volume 2. German War 1943-1945
Hardcover: 542 pages
Publisher: Ashgate Publishing Limited; (21 May 2007)
Language English
ISBN-10: 0754626407
ISBN-13: 978-0754626404

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Volume 3. Japanese War 1941-1945
Hardcover: 542 pages
Publisher: Ashgate Publishing Limited; (21 May 2007)
Language English
ISBN-10: 0754626407
ISBN-13: 978-0754626404

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Vollume 4. Home Fronts
Hardcover: 477 pages
Publisher: Ashgate Publishing Limited; (21 May 2007)
Language English
ISBN-10: 0754626431
ISBN-13: 978-0754626435

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Volume 5. Holocaust
Hardcover: 528 pages
Publisher: Ashgate Publishing Limited; (21 May 2007)
Language English
ISBN-10: 0754626466
ISBN-13: 978-0754626466

Volume 6. Causes and Background
Hardcover: 520 pages
Publisher: Ashgate Publishing Limited; (21 May 2007)
Language English
ISBN-10: 0754626520
ISBN-13: 978-0754626527

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Volume 7. Alliance Politics and Grand Strategy
Hardcover: 500 pages
Publisher: Ashgate Publishing Limited; (21 May 2007)
Language English
ISBN-10: 0754626490
ISBN-13: 978-0754626497

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Monday, 26 July 2010

Вожді і битви минулих віків

Битви світової історії

Перемоги і слава польської зброї

Wednesday, 21 July 2010

Володарі Польщі

Давня серія додатків до "Жечіпосполітей"

Mieszko I (? - 992)
Bolesław I Chrobry (967 - 1025)
Mieszko II
Kazimierz Odnowiciel
Bolesław II Śmiały (Szczodry, 1040 - 1081)
Władysław Herman
Bolesław III Krzywousty (1085 - 1138)
Kazimierz II Sprawiedliwy (1138 - 1194)
Henryk I Brodaty (1165? - 1238)
Konrad I Mazowiecki (1187 - 1247)
Bolesław Rogatka i Leszek Czarny
Przemysł II (1257 - 1296)
Wacław II
Władysław I Łokietek (1260 - 1333)
Kazimierz III Wielki (1310 - 1370)
Ludwik Węgierski (1326 - 1382)
Jadwiga
Władysław II Jagiełło (1351 - 1434)
Władysław III Warneńczyk (1424 - 1444)
Kazimierz IV Jagiellończyk (1427 - 1492, krol Polski od 1447)
Jan I Olbracht (1459 - 1501, król Polski od 1491)
Aleksandr
Zygmunt I Stary (1467 - 1548, król
Zygmunt II August (1520 - 1572, król Polski od 1529)
Anna Jagiellonka
Henryk Walezy (1551 - 1589, król Polski od 1573)
Stefan Batory (1533 - 1586, król Polski od 1574)
Zygmunt III Waza (1566 - 1632, król Polski od 1587)
Władysław IV (1595 - 1648, król Polski od 1632)
Jan II Kazimierz (1609 - 1672, król Polski od 1648)
Michał Korybut Wiśniowiecki
Jan III Sobieski (1629 - 1696, król Polski od 1674)
August II Mocny (1670 - 1733, król Polski od 1697)
Stanisław Leszczyński (1677 - 1766, król Polski w latach 1704 - 1709)
August III
Stanisław August Poniatowski (1732 - 1798, król Polski od 1764)
Fryderyk August

Thursday, 8 July 2010

Wednesday, 7 July 2010

Книга Східних Кресів

1. Вступ. Початок Русі
2. Болєслав Хоробрий і Ярослав Мудрий
3. Данило Галицький
4. Казимир Третій підбиває Галицьку Русь
5. Велике князівство Литовське
6. Війни із Московським князівством. Битва під Оршею 1514 р.
7. Захист кресів від татарських наїздів. Битва під Клецьком 1506 р.
8. Рід Радивилів
9. Реформація і француз на троні
10. Університет у Вільні
11. Унія 1595 р. і початок козацьких повстань
12. Баторій під Псковом 1570-1582 рр.
13. Дмитрій Самозванець 1604-1605 рр.
14. Облога Троїце-Сергієвої Лаври 1608-1609 рр., Клушин 1610 р. і Москва 1611-1612 рр.
15. Хмельниччина 1648-1654 рр.
16. Оборона Кресів. Прикордонні фортеці
17. Після Переясслава 1654-1657 рр.
18. Від Виговського до Мазепи 1657-1709 рр.
19. Шведський "Потоп" 1655-1660 рр.
20. Барська конфедерація 1767-1772 рр.
21. Коліївщина 1768 р.
22. Поділи Республіки 1772-1795 рр.
23. Повстання Костюшка 1794 рр.
24. Похід Наполеона 1812 р.
25. Кременецький ліцей 1805-1831 рр.
26. Адам Міцкевич
27. Повстання листопадове 1831 р.
28. Русифікація і знесення унії 1839 р.
29. Смуга осідлості
30. Повстання січневе 1863 р.
31. Юзеф Пілсудський
32. Галицька нафта
33. Львів і Галичина під Австрією
34. Польсько-українська війна 1918-1919 рр.
35. Польсько-радянська війна 1919-1920 рр.
36. Оборона Львова 1920 р.
37. Полонізація кресів
38. Осадники і ОУН
39. Освіта на кресах
40. 17 вересня 1939 року
41. Червоний терор 1939-1941 рр. ---- дивись також тут
42. Підпільна держава АК 1940-1944 рр.
43. Волинська різанина 1943-1944 рр.
44. "Репатріація" після 1945 р.
45. Повоєнна боротьба з совітами ---- дивись також тут
46. Львів у Вроцлаві, Вільно у Щеціні
47. Поляки в СРСР
48. Після краху СРСР
49. Питання ЄС
50. Підсумки

Друга частина

1. Львів
2. Вільно
3. Личаковський цвинтар
4. Несвіж
5. Станіславів
6. Тернопіль
7. Новогрудок
8. Збараж
9. Гродно
10. Крем"янець
11. Косів
12. Пінськ
13. Гуцульщина
14. Луцьк
15. Барановичі
16. Коломия
17. Слонім
18. Золочів
19. Ліда
20. Бережани
21. Волоковиськ

Морські походи і битви (щотижневі додатки до газети "Жечпосполіта")

1. Вступ
2. Народи Моря та їхня навала на Давній Єгипет
3. Давньогрецька колонізація басейну Середземного і Чорного морів
4. Греко-перські війни. Битва коло Саламіну 480 р. до Р.Х.
5. Пелопонеська війна. Катастрофа Сиракузької експедиції Афін 415-413 рр. до Р.Х.
6. Фінікійські експедиції. Карфагенська морська держава
7. Війни між Римом і Карфагеном. Битва коло Екнома 256 р. до Р.Х.
8. Боротьба Римської республіки із піратами у Середземному морі, 67 р. до Р.Х.
9. Домові війни у Римській республіці. Битва коло миса Акцій 31 р. до Р.Х.
10. Війни Ромейської імперії з арабами
11. Походи вікінгів і норманів
12. Відкриття Гренландії та Вінланду вікінгами
13. Морські походи Давньої Русі
14. Походи поморських слов"ян
15. Столітня війна між Англією та Францією. Битва коло Слюйса 1340 р.
16. Венеція та хрестові походи. Взяття Константинополя хрестоносцями 1204 р.
17. Морські походи хана Хубілая на Японію 1274 та 1281 рр.
18. Сім експедицій китайського адмірала Джен Хе
19. Японо-корейська війна 1592-1598 рр.
20. Взяття Константинополя турками 1453 р.
21. Корсари Північної Африки, 15-19 ст.
21. Португальська колоніальна імперія
22. Подорожі Колумба 1492-1506 рр.
23. Конкіста Америки
24. Подорож Магеллана
25. Френсіс Дрейк
26. Турецька експансія і битва під Лепанто 1571 р.
27. Поразка Великої Армади 1588 р.
28. Англійська і французька експансія в Північну Америку
29. Генрі Морган і пірати Карібського моря
30. Флот Жечі Посполитої і битва під Оливою 1627 р.
31. Рішельє під Ла Рошеллю 1627-1628 рр.
32. Чорноморські виправи запорожців
33. Англо-голандські війни 1653-1673 рр.
34. Північна війна 1700-1721 рр.
35. Семилітня війна на морі 1756-1763 рр.
36. Подорожі капітана Кука
37. Європейська колонізація Ост-Індій
38. Англо-голандські війни 18 ст.
39. Перший підводний човен 1776 р.
40. Абукірська битва 1798 р.
41. Трафальгар 1805 р.
42. Наварін 1827 р.
43. Кримська війна 1853-1856 рр.
44. Війна Півночі і Півдня 1861-1865 рр.
45. Лісса 1866 р.
46. Підводний човен Джевецького 1884 р.
47. Друга поразка Армади. Іспано-американська війна 1898 р.
48. Мароканська криза 1911 р.
49. Врагу не сдаётся наш гордый "Варяг" 1904 р.
50. Сонце Цусіми 1905 р.
51. Втеча "Ґебена" і "Бреслау" 1914 р.
52. Бій біля Фолклендів 1914 р.
53. Галіполійський десант 1915 р.
54. Австро-Угорщина проти Італії 1915-1918 рр.
55. Ютландський бій 1916 р.
56. Німецька підводна війна
57. Загибель кайзеровських рейдерів
58. Моонзундський десант 1917 р.
59. Польський флот у вересні 1939 р.
60. Загибель "Графа Шпее"
61. Вторгнення в Норвегію 1940 р.
62. Операція "Катапульта" і Мерс-ель-Кебір 1940 р.
63. Друга німецька підводна війна
64. Затоплення італійського флота в Таранто 1940 р.
65. Погоня за "Бісмарком" 1941 р.
66. Перл Харбор 1941 р.
67. Арктичні конвої
68. Загибель "Принца Уельського" 1942 р.
69. Битва в Кораловому морі 1942 р.
70. Мідвей 1942 р.
71. Затоплення "Тірпітца" 1943 р.
72. Від Гвадалканала до Філіпін 1942-1944 рр.
73. Камікадзе під Окінавою 1945 р.
74. Корейська війна 1950-1953 рр.
75. ЮСС Наутілус
76. Близькосхідні війни 1967 і 1973 рр.
77. Війна у В"єтнамі 1965-1973 рр.
78. Індія проти Пакістану 1965 і 1971 рр.
79. Фолкленди 1982 р.
80. Тигри Таміл Ілама
81. Пустинна Буря на морі 1991 р.
82. Сомалійські пірати
83. Сучасні атомні флоти

20 dodatkowych zeszytów cyklu Bitwy i wyprawy morskie od 3 września 2011 do 14 stycznia 2012 r.

85. „Burza", „Błyskawica", „Grom" – skrawki Niepodległej w boju
86. Odyseja polskich statków handlowych i pasażerskich podczas II wojny światowej
87. „Dzik" i „Sokół" – straszne bliźniaki na Morzu Śródziemnym
88. Malta 1940 – 1943 – brytyjski bastion na Morzu Śródziemnym
89. Moskity morskich potęg – morskie działania specjalne w czasie II wojny światowej
90. Inwazja Normandii + wielkie ewakuacje i wielkie desanty morskie II wojny; brytyjskie i amerykańskie jednostki desantowe
91. Storpedowanie „Wilhelma Gustloffa" + wykaz największych katastrof morskich
92. Flota i broń atomowa – amerykańskie eksperymenty na atolu Bikini w 1946 roku. „Sowieckie Bikini" – próby nuklearne na Nowej Ziemi (1961) z wykorzystaniem okrętów
93. Pierwszy (1954 – 1955) kryzys tajwański; m.in. internowanie statków PRL przez USA (drugi kryzys – 1958). Francuska wojna morska w Indochinach (1946 – 1954), w tym udział polskiego statku „Jan Kiliński" w transporcie partyzantów Viet Minhu z południa na północ; ponad 100 000 „pasażerów"
94. Kryzys kubański na morzu, czyli amerykańska „kwarantanna" wokół „wyspy wolności" i działania sowieckich okrętów podwodnych (1962)
95. Incydent „Pueblo" – zajęcie amerykańskiej jednostki wywiadowczej przez KRLD (1968) + flota USA podczas wojny w Wietnamie
96. Operacja „Jennifer" – amerykańska próba (1974) podniesienia wraku sowieckiego okrętu podwodnego K-129, który zatonął na Pacyfiku w 1968 r.
97. Tragedia „Kurska" + inne kolizje atomowych okrętów podwodnych z jednostkami nawodnymi i podwodnymi
98. Morscy komandosi – operacje specjalne na morzu po II wojnie światowej
99. Budowa Kanału Sueskiego, pierwszego w historii, który połączył oceaniczne akweny. Informacje o innych wielkich kanałach: Panamskim, Kilońskim, Białomorskim...
100. Marynarka Wojenna RP 2012. Rola, miejsce i zadania w systemie obronnym państwa
101. Odkrycie wraku „Titanica" przez Ballarda. Badania podwodne mórz i oceanów, poszukiwanie wraków, wynalazki umożliwiające przebywanie pod wodą
102. Samotni żeglarze czasów najnowszych
103. Wielkie współczesne oceaniczne regaty żeglarskie
104. Najsłynniejsze żaglowce i najsłynniejsi żeglarze wszech czasów

Friday, 23 April 2010

Із святом!

Thursday, 15 April 2010

Фортеці Північної Італії

Фортеця Пескьєра даль Ґарда, північно-західний кут відомого австрійського "Квадрілатерале"

Світлини у фотоальбомі:

Peschiera del Garda

До речі, на обшарпані (на відміну від інших будинків) габзбурзькі казарми у фортеці начепили тримовну дошку, що повідомляє, що ця будівля є власністю центрального уряду, що й дає гроші на її утримання. Пояснення для туристів тобто чому саме цей будинок такий обдертий

Варто звернути увагу на пам"ятник загиблим у "війні 1940-45 років" (і на надпис на щиті статуя)

Алессандрія

Славне Маренґо -- неподалік. Але тоді й все місто було обнесене такими ж мурами. Зараз армія звідти пішла (як відмінили призов), і фортеця не використовується ніяк (у 2007-му там ще були якісь воєнні установи)

Світлини у фотоальбомі:

Alessandria

Також варто звернути увагу на пам"ятник загиблим у війні 1940-45 років.

Венеційська фортеця Сірміоне на озері Ґарда. Це середньовіччя, ясна річ. Розташована на перешийку вузенького півострова, що виступає в озеро з південного берега

Світлини у фотоальбомі:

Sirmione

Wednesday, 14 April 2010

Вереснева кампанія 1939 -- в обкладинках видавництва "Беллона"

Thursday, 25 March 2010

American Thinker: Secularism's Ongoing Debt to Christianity

Старша дитина прислала своє фото на фоні невмирущого полотна "Державотворення" у Верховній Раді. Сюди я вивішую лише фон.

Бо -- НЄТ СЛОВ (щодо фону) -- бо я не вірю, що мля митець це мля творив як постмодерністську іронію, як нашу хутірську версію Комара-Меламіда. Бо це такий жах і сором, що...

Thursday, 18 March 2010

Is Yasmin Alibhai-Brown the stupidest woman in Britain?

Останнє речення - + багато

Wednesday, 17 March 2010

Kate Nash's feminist anti-porn rant: a few tiny flaws

The Keynesian Fraud

Neo-Soviet Russia and America

Friday, 12 March 2010

Climategate: the IPCC's whitewash 'review' is the AGW camp's biggest mistake yet

Ukraine's spreads tighten as risk recedes, S&P raises rating

http://www.marketwatch.com/story/ukraines-spreads-rally-as-political-risk-recedes-2010-03-12?siteid=rss&rss=1

By Polya Lesova, MarketWatch
FRANKFURT (MarketWatch) -- Ukraine's credit spreads narrowed on Friday, indicating a declining probability of default, after the formation of a new governing coalition brought much-needed political stability and prompted a rating upgrade from Standard & Poor's.
Five-year CDS spreads on Ukraine tightened by 34 basis points to 721 on Friday, according to data from Markit.
Spreads have narrowed by 267 basis points over the past 28 days. A tighter spread means that investors are pricing in a lower risk of debt default.
"Ukraine's spreads continued to rally as it took another major step towards political stability," said Gavan Nolan, vice president of credit research at Markit.
In Kiev, a new majority coalition was formed on Thursday and Mykola Azarov, a long-time ally of Yanukovych, was chosen as prime minister.
Investors are breathing a sigh of relief that the long-running battle between President Viktor Yanukovych and former Prime Minister Yulia Tymoshenko appears to be over, at least for now. That battle had crippled policy making at a time when the economy contracted sharply, as demand for Ukraine's steel exports collapsed.
The International Monetary Fund had provided a $16.4 billion aid package, but the fund suspended further loan disbursements because of Ukraine's failure to implement tough fiscal targets.
In response to the formation of a new government, Standard & Poor's raised late Thursday Ukraine's foreign-currency sovereign-credit rating to B-/C from CCC+/C, saying that the once-high level of political risk has receded.
"We believe that today's formation of a new governing coalition and cabinet in Ukraine has paved the way for better policy coordination and a renewal of relations with the IMF," said Standard & Poor's credit analyst Frank Gill in a statement.
The provision of funding under the $16.4 billion IMF standby arrangement will be essential to boost confidence in Ukraine's monetary and economic stability, to finance a component of this year's budget and to help improve the finances of Ukraine's pension system and state-owned Naftogaz, according to S&P.
The outlook on Ukraine's ratings is positive, reflecting the potential for the new government to work together with the president to achieve a more sustainable budgetary position, Gill said.
On Friday, Ukraine's benchmark PFTS stock index gained 2.4% to 819 points in afternoon trading.
"Investors likely will be relieved at the return of a measure of political stability, and the fact that early parliamentary elections were avoided," said Alex Brideau, an analyst at Eurasia Group, adding that passage of the 2010 budget in April is now a realistic scenario.
The timing of a lending restart under the IMF's program will depend in part on how the Azarov-led government addresses the fund's concerns about high social benefits spending, Brideau said.
Polya Lesova is reporter for MarketWatch, based in FrankfurtBy Polya Lesova, MarketWatch

Thursday, 11 March 2010

Why Google's deal with Italy is a good thing for readers / The Christian Science Monitor - CSMonitor.com

Цікава картинка )))

American Thinker: The 'Progressives' Are Really 'Oppressives'

Reconsidering Parshev

http://www.sublimeoblivion.com/2009/08/04/reconsidering-parshev/

In most Russian bookstores, there is a bookshelf or two dedicated to so-called “patriotic literature” – reappraisals of Stalin against “liberal revisionism”, overviews of Russia’s secret super-weapons, the exploits of its special forces and Russian theo-philosophy. Much of it is (apparent) nonsense, but the economic crisis has forced me to reconsider one particular “patriotic” thesis – Andrei Parshev’s Why Russia is not America.

His big idea, an elaboration and tying together of earlier work, is that Russia’s economy is structurally uncompetitive on the world stage, and that integrating with the global economy will lead to catastrophe. This is because of his counter-intuitive observation that Russia is overpopulated. Though its population density is low on paper, the cold climate, huge landmass and poor riverine connections means that the carrying capacity of north Eurasia is nowhere near as high as that of the world’s other centers of economic and political power – the US, China, and Europe. Because manufacturing is inherently loss-making on the Eurasian plains, it is much more economically “efficient” to just ship out Russia’s mineral resources to fuel manufacturing in warmer, coastal regions such as the Pearl River Delta or the Great Lakes. No more than 20mn Russians are needed to service the pipelines and grow fat from the proceeds; the other 120mn are free to eke out a subsistence living on Russia’s marginal lands, or die out (as indeed many did during the era of neo-liberal reforms). He recommended a return to sovereignty, autarky and sobornost as the solution to these woes.

I agreed with Parshev’s analysis upon my first reading of his book in 2002, a time when I still thought Putin was no more than a better-dressed, sober gangster in Yeltsin’s mold and the country showed little signs of real recovery. Yet as evidence mounted that Russia really was prospering by the mid-2000’s and I became influenced by Krugman’s criticisms of competitiveness, I increasingly came to reject his ideas (e.g. see this comment). However, since then increasing awareness of the vital role played by protectionism in “catch-up” industrial development, the reality of peak oil and above all the economic crisis forced me into reconsidering Parshev.

Russia’s Geographic Curse
According to the geographic-determinism school of economic development, Russia is afflicted by a panoply of woes experienced by no other country or region to anywhere near the same extent. This is held to explain its special path of development, in which attempts to “catch up” with the West only end up reinforcing a Sisyphean loop of unrealized ambitions and tragic legacies.

1) Russia is too cold.

But aren’t Canada and Finland prosperous liberal democracies, despite their harsh climate? Yes, they are. But most of Canada’s 30mn-strong population is concentrated around the Great Lakes, Vancouver and Newfoundland. The former has great riverine connections with the dynamic US heartlands, while the latter two have maritime climes with excellent deep sea ports. There are a few millions living in the agriculturally productive Canadian Prairies (equivalent to Russia’s Black Earth regions). However, Canada has nowhere near so many people living so far north and so far inland as Russia.

Without central planning and subsidized energy flows, it is highly unlikely that settlements in deepest Siberia or the High Arctic could have developed into substantial population centers. Manitoba-Saskatchewan-Alberta (5.9mn) together have fewer people than the demographically weakest Russian Far East (6.7mn), let alone Siberia (20.1mn), the Urals (12.4mn) and the Volga (31.2mn) which all have similar or worse climatic conditions. Just compare the populations of the following rough climatic equivalents: Moscow (14.8mn) and Calgary (1.1mn); Irkutsk (594k) and Yellowknife (19k); Norilsk (135k) and Churchill (923).

As for Finland, it is climatically and geographically equivalent to St.-Petersburg and the Leningrad Oblast, which are atypical in having relatively mild climes and sea access during the warm seasons. Even so, Finland has an unremarkable GDP per capita compared to other developed nations, despite it having some of the best human capital in the world.

The cold makes growing seasons short and late spring droughts are a recurrent problem. This traditionally made Russian agriculture outside the southern Black Earth regions (where the cold is mitigated by exception soil fertility and access to the seas) unproductive and barely sufficient for population subsistence.

This in turn gave rise to peasant cultural traditions deeply averse to the development of capitalist enterprise, with its emphasis on individual initiative and steady capital accumulation. The classic Kluchevsky quote from the 19th century:

There is one thing of which the Great Russian is sure − that a sunny summer day is valuable, that nature would allow little time convenient for agricultural work and that a short Great Russian summer can be shortened even more by a sudden untimely turn of bad weather. This would force the Great Russian peasant to hurry up and toil in order to achieve as much as possible over a short while and take the crop in good time… In this way the Great Russian would learn to take an extraordinary but short effort, would learn to do rush, hasty work and then take a rest during forced idleness in autumn and winter. No other nation in Europe is capable of such short extraordinary effort; but, on the other hand, such lack of habit to regular, moderate, constant work is unlikely to be found anywhere in Europe.

Though peasants view capitalists with suspicion throughout the world (money relations are a threat to the village social relations that serve to guarantee subsistence to its members), the precariousness of Russian agriculture reinforced the antipathy and encouraged the formation of a strong state capable of accumulating and protecting surpluses in the good times to insure the people from dearth in the bad times. It is probably no accident that the Russian state arose out of Muscovy, one of the remotest and least agriculturally productive regions, which however compensated with overwhelming military and political power.

Of course, the influence of climatic factors is much weaker on industry and services, than on agriculture. They have higher added value and the severe cold is mitigated by Russia’s energy riches, made exploitable by the Industrial Revolution. That said, the infrastructure costs remain significantly higher than in more climatically benign nations.

As you can see from the map above, east of Poland and north of Romania, Crimea and the Caucasus, Eurasia is afflicted by deep permafrost. This necessitates laying thick, heated concrete foundations and makes constructing housing, factories and skyscrapers far more costly than in developed nations, despite Russia’s cheaper labor force.

2) Russia is too big and remote.

Russia is in the paradoxical position of being at once overpopulated and underpopulated. Overpopulated in that it is too cold and harsh to sustain a big population; underpopulated in that the population density is low, which makes transport costs per capita prohibitively high. The challenge posed by its huge size and lack of sea ports was noted as far back as the 18th century by Adam Smith in his Wealth of Nations.

…all that part of Asia which lies any considerable way north of the Euxine and Caspian seas, the ancient Scythia, the modern Tartary and Siberia, seem in all ages of the world to have been in the same barbarous and uncivilised state in which we find them at present. The Sea of Tartary is the frozen ocean which admits of no navigation, and though some of the greatest rivers in the world run through that country, they are at too great a distance from one another to carry commerce and communication through the greater part of it.

This is also a constant theme of Stratfor’s analysis (e.g. see The Recession in Russia).

Throughout history, Russia has lacked navigable river transportation and access to ocean trading routes. Furthermore, Russia’s population is scattered across its vast territory, its natural resources are mostly found in unpopulated areas and a number of regional challengers constantly threaten its territorial integrity. Russia’s core is essentially the northeastern portion of European Russia…

With vast territory, constant expansion to the buffers and a lack of internal transportation, Russia requires a substantial amount of resources to maintain and defend its borders. It requires top-down management of the economy to focus resources on overcoming geographical impediments to development and security. As such, Russia is not a capital-rich country; it is starved for capital by its infrastructural needs, security costs, chronic low economic productivity, harsh climate and geography. Unlike the United States or the United Kingdom, where industrial and post-industrial economic development can spring forth with little or no direction thanks to favorable geography (intricate river transportation systems in the United States and access to oceanic trade routes for both) and the relative security of oceanic barriers, Russia has had to rely on firm state-driven economic development.

Railways ameliorated Russia’s situation by vastly decreasing transport costs across its barren continental swathes, thus reducing the relative advantages enjoyed by the Rimland nations through virtue of their access to sea traffic. (This development was noted more than a hundred years ago by the geopolitical theorist Mackinder, who was concerned by the strategic threat Russian railways posed to British-ruled India). Meanwhile, the telegraph, telephones, radio, TV and eventually the Internet nullified the effects of distance on information exchange.

Nonetheless, Russia continues to incur great costs on account of its cold, continental nature. Road and railway maintenance are relatively hard and expensive in Russia, which has more limited spare resources in the first place. It also largely misses out on the great productivity gains accruing from the cargo freighter revolution of the late industrial age. Outside the Moscow road rings and the Moscow – St.-Petersburg corridor, highways remain little more than directions.

3) Russia has too many enemies.

Given its origins as a settled, economically-weak civilization surrounded by foreboding plains dominated by Asiatic horsemen to the east and Germanic, Scandinavian and Polish rivals to the west, Russia’s rulers have always felt insecure. This drove them to expand the Empire since the 15th century to occupy natural buffers, as far down the North European Plain as possible, to the Carpathian Mountains to the southwest, the Caucasus and Hindu Kush to the south and the Altai Mountains, Tian Shan and Stanovoy Range in the Far East. As Catherine the Great pithily put it, “I have no way to defend my borders except to extend them”. Below is a map showing how Russia’s geo-strategists view the world:

Poor internal communications and technical deficiencies forced Moscow to main large standing armies on every potential front, incurring a constant drain on scarce resources and the productive labor pool. More resources were required for administering non-Russian lands, maintaining a formidable internal policing apparatus, and funding the development of strategic sectors, above all those tied to military applications. Security vacuums in Russia’s periphery drew in Russian troops and bureaucrats. All this makes imperial overstretch, economic inefficiency and primitive consumer markets constant features (not bugs) of any Eurasian empire.

4) Russia retains a burdensome Soviet legacy.

Though technological developments partly mitigated the negative roles of climate and geography in Russian economic development, the Soviet physical legacy of single-industry towns, “gigantism”, remote settlements, and “structural militarization” acted in the opposite direction.

Towns were built in remote areas, including the High Arctic and the Far East, regardless of costs and explicitly designed to serve a planned economy. Heating in apartment blocks was centralized, meaning that even if half the inhabitants left the rest were still entitled to utilities services. All this constituted a massive diversion of energy flows from more “efficient” purposes. Many of these towns relied on just a few large industrial employers to survive; closing the enterprise down, even if it was high unprofitable, would have resulted in humanitarian catastrophe. Incidentally, this is precisely the reason why the neoliberal reforms of the 1990’s weren’t (and probably couldn’t be) really carried through.

Stalin built up the foundations for a gargantuan military-industrial complex (MIC) centered in the remote, uninviting Urals. After the 1960’s, the MIC metastasized to such an extent as to constitute around 30% of Soviet GDP by the mid-1980’s. Though activity collapsed in the 1990’s, Russia retains a structurally militarized economy. Though currently dormant and atrophied, it can be easily reconstituted. In the mean-time the MIC continues to lock up a great deal of Russia’s human and capital resources, along with the armed forced and its vast array of security agencies.

Why America is not Russia
The US is structurally different in almost all respects. Though it has a huge continental interior, its fertile areas are interconnected by an extensive riverine network that remains ice-free throughout the winter months. It possesses excellent sea ports on both coasts. The Great Lakes region is perhaps the best place anywhere in the world for industrial development.

America’s strategic isolation and massive internal potential allow it to maintain a world class navy and expeditionary forces with ease. The US uses them calculatedly and sparingly to check the emergence of any Eurasian hegemon, the only construct that has any chance of challenging its global preeminence. And it is not afflicted by economic distortions from its deep past because America was, at least internally, a consistently free market nation since the earliest days of its founding. Its small population and abundant resources produced large per capita surpluses, sparing it from the Malthusian crises that periodically stunted older civilizations, and instead spurring on the development of free-wheeling capitalism.

From Stratfor’s The Geography of Recession:

The most important aspect of the United States is not simply its sheer size, but the size of its usable land. Russia and China may both be similar-sized in absolute terms, but the vast majority of Russian and Chinese land is useless for agriculture, habitation or development. In contrast, courtesy of the Midwest, the United States boasts the world’s largest contiguous mass of arable land — and that mass does not include the hardly inconsequential chunks of usable territory on both the West and East coasts.

Second is the American maritime transport system. The Mississippi River, linked as it is to the Red, Missouri, Ohio and Tennessee rivers, comprises the largest interconnected network of navigable rivers in the world. In the San Francisco Bay, Chesapeake Bay and Long Island Sound/New York Bay, the United States has three of the world’s largest and best natural harbors. The series of barrier islands a few miles off the shores of Texas and the East Coast form a water-based highway — an Intracoastal Waterway — that shields American coastal shipping from all but the worst that the elements can throw at ships and ports.

The real beauty is that the two overlap with near perfect symmetry. The Intracoastal Waterway and most of the bays link up with agricultural regions and their own local river systems (such as the series of rivers that descend from the Appalachians to the East Coast), while the Greater Mississippi river network is the circulatory system of the Midwest. Even without the addition of canals, it is possible for ships to reach nearly any part of the Midwest from nearly any part of the Gulf or East coasts. The result is not just a massive ability to grow a massive amount of crops — and not just the ability to easily and cheaply move the crops to local, regional and global markets — but also the ability to use that same transport network for any other economic purpose without having to worry about food supplies.

The implications of such a confluence are deep and sustained. Where most countries need to scrape together capital to build roads and rail to establish the very foundation of an economy — transport capability — geography granted the United States a near-perfect system at no cost. That frees up U.S. capital for other pursuits and almost condemns the United States to be capital-rich. Any additional infrastructure the United States constructs is icing on the cake. (The cake itself is free — and, incidentally, the United States had so much free capital that it was able to go on to build one of the best road-and-rail networks anyway, resulting in even greater economic advantages over competitors.)

Third, geography has also ensured that the United States has very little local competition. To the north, Canada is both much colder and much more mountainous than the United States. Canada’s only navigable maritime network — the Great Lakes-St. Lawrence Seaway —is shared with the United States, and most of its usable land is hard by the American border. Often this makes it more economically advantageous for Canadian provinces to integrate with their neighbor to the south than with their co-nationals to the east and west.

Similarly, Mexico has only small chunks of land, separated by deserts and mountains, that are useful for much more than subsistence agriculture; most of Mexican territory is either too dry, too tropical or too mountainous. And Mexico completely lacks any meaningful river system for maritime transport…

With geography empowering the United States and hindering Canada and Mexico, the United States does not need to maintain a large standing military force to counter either. The Canadian border is almost completely unguarded, and the Mexican border is no more than a fence in most locations — a far cry from the sort of military standoffs that have marked more adversarial borders in human history. Not only are Canada and Mexico not major threats, but the U.S. transport network allows the United States the luxury of being able to quickly move a smaller force to deal with occasional problems rather than requiring it to station large static forces on its borders.

Like the transport network, this also helps the U.S. focus its resources on other things.

Taken together, the integrated transport network, large tracts of usable land and lack of a need for a standing military have one critical implication: The U.S. government tends to take a hands-off approach to economic management, because geography has not cursed the United States with any endemic problems. This may mean that the United States — and especially its government — comes across as disorganized, but it shifts massive amounts of labor and capital to the private sector, which for the most part allows resources to flow to wherever they will achieve the most efficient and productive results.

Russia’s Return to the Future
As I pointed out earlier here and here, Russia is returning to the future. Its demography is stabilizing after the precipitous collapse of the 1990’s, and social morale and faith in the nation is slowly returning, to the dismay of geopolitical competitors, “Russophobes” and “social progressives” alike. Russia is implementing an industrial policy aimed at manufacturing growth and technology diffusion. The state brought the regions back under its thumb and is again becoming the linchpin of the Russian economy. The party’s over for Russia’s oligarchs:

Because of the financial crisis and government consolidation, the once-powerful oligarchs no longer have a say in their future and are merely along for the ride. Indeed, they no longer constitute a powerful and distinct business “class.” Some oligarchs will survive the shakeout, but not with their independence. To some degree, they all will become part of the Kremlin machine so carefully engineered by Putin. As copper oligarch Iskander Makhmudov said in a rare interview: “The oligarchs now have mixed fortunes, but we will all end up being soldiers of Putin one day.”

Instead of liberalizing, the economic crisis has simply reinforced already latent trends in Russia’s economic development. Russia’s ongoing globalization since the 1970’s is slowly beginning to reverse itself; Russia’s decision to apply to the WTO as part of a customs union with Belarus and Kazakhstan is an early indicator of an accelerating trend. Much of what I predicted in The Importance of Self-Sufficiency half a year ago is already coming to pass:

A wave of consolidation will occur in the Russian banking industry, Russia Inc. will close the oil windfall-foreign intermediary-cheap credit loop that was its prior financing mechanism and the country will emerge with a stronger, self-sufficient financial system. The oligarchs, Moscow and the middle classes bear the brunt of the crisis, while the provinces, agriculture and domestic manufacturing benefit, thereby reinforcing already latent tendencies in national development.

Though the drop in Russia’s output was far greater than I expected, it was far worse in Ukraine and the Baltics. Ukraine’s project of Westernization has failed utterly. According to my quick back of the envelope calculations, its GDP is currently (taking into account the recent collapse) around 30-40% lower than it was in the late USSR! (Russia’s is around 0-10% lower, but it is not faced with a fiscal or political crisis). Thus, though there is a possibility of a humanitarian crisis and a demographic shock in Russia, it is much lower than in Ukraine – where in any case a post-Soviet fertility recovery is much less in evidence in the first place. Damningly, opinion polls indicate that Putin and Medvedev are by far the most popular politicians in Ukraine.

Decline and disillusionment in Ukraine, and the return of isolationist nationalism to Russia. What next? History is a guide. A fundamental feature of autarkies is that to be truly self-sufficient they need to expand their domain, much as the Bolsheviks created the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics, which in turn expanded it to COMECON. It has to expand territorially in order to have access to all the vital building blocks of an industrial economy and to be able to hold its own against other economic blocs, which are more tightly interwoven into the world market. As such, it is very likely that within the next decade Ukraine, Belarus and Kazakhstan will again become integrated with Russia, on a spectrum of possibilities ranging from an EU-like structure to a unitary state-empire.

Reintegration will create a state with 210mn souls and will significantly increase the industrial (including military-industrial) power at Moscow’s disposal by at least 50%. One has to keep in mind that Eurasia’s industrial base was meant to be unified when it was constructed during the Soviet era, and as such the gains accruing from reintegration will be more than just the sum of its parts. One of Russia’s geopolitical priorities is to thwart an independent energy corridor for the proposed Nabucco oil pipeline and to link up with its ally Armenia, so it will no doubt continue pressuring Georgia to return into its orbit. Saakashvili’s days in power are almost certainly numbered. Whether Russia will choose to expand in Central Asia is more questionable. On the one hand, they have respectable energy reserves (especially gas), constitute demographic reservoirs amidst graying Slavdom and are geopolitically important. There are few problems with radical Islam and on the whole they appreciate Russian culture. On the other hand, they will present a development burden and China will likely oppose an overt Russian reassertion in Central Asia.

I do not think these trends are possible, or even desirable, to arrest, even should the Kremlin leadership want to (they will be pulled along by the Russian people). The reasons why they are inevitable, I leave to a later post.

Why they are nothing to lament over can be answered now – because of other key global trends. Russia’s oil production very likely peaked in 2008, along with global production. Conserving what remains for its own use should be a priority; exports should only be allowed on the most favorable terms, in exchange for Western technologies, not US Treasuries, Chinese trinkets or oligarch mansions in London. One consequence is that there will be increasing competition for resources. The industrial core (the US, Europe and China) will probably strike up strategic alliances to control and influence resource-rich nations, either overtly (latter-day gunboat diplomacy) or covertly (influence operations, information wars, etc). In this world, much like in the 1930’s, the strong will beat the weak. As such, Russia’s geopolitical priorities would logically be – and this already seems to be happening – to a) maintain its military strength, including the nuclear deterrent, b) neutralize and co-opt Europe and c) extend influence over the energy-rich Arctic, Central Asia and the Middle East. To pursue these goals effectively, it needs economic sovereignty, morale, and the attributes of an empire (in Russia’s case, these are all inter-linked).

The era of childish enchantment with the West, pursued by Andropov’s successors, is coming to an end, at last dispelled by the deafening crash of globalization. Russia is returning to its past and future; its triumphs and tragedies; in other words, its history, its soul, its path, its world. The world of Surkov, Stalin and Sisyphus. A world described by Parshev.

Friday, 1 October 2010

Thursday, 16 September 2010

Monday, 26 July 2010

Wednesday, 21 July 2010

Thursday, 8 July 2010

Wednesday, 7 July 2010

Friday, 23 April 2010

Thursday, 15 April 2010

Wednesday, 14 April 2010

Thursday, 25 March 2010

Thursday, 18 March 2010

Wednesday, 17 March 2010

Tuesday, 16 March 2010

Friday, 12 March 2010

Thursday, 11 March 2010