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We will change, or I will die
Direct Translation via Google Translate. Edited.
by Evgeny Norin

[ReadovkaSpace] During the First World War, a person walking along Nevsky Prospekt or walking at the Red Gate in Moscow might think that nothing special was happening to the country. Cabbies drove, shops worked, people lived an ordinary life. Factories, universities were built, people intrigued, loved, were born and died. They ate, they drank drunk.

In 1917, the country collapsed, went through the Civil War, and was reassembled, changed beyond recognition. In the crowd that came to the Maly Theater to see The Merchant of Venice in October 1916, hardly many thought that they were spending the last months of their life, which can be called normal, and in less than six months they would find themselves inside a working meat grinder that would not stop for a long time. about forty years old. In the same way, in 1985, people who giggled at jokes about decrepit general secretaries did not assume that the seemingly unshakable state would fall apart in six years, crushing those who did not have time to dodge under the rubble.

Now we are facing the same terrible challenge.

The events that have taken place in the past three months are incomparable to anything in our memory. The effects for the economy produced by the restrictions and confiscations that have already taken place are comparable to a good nuclear strike - another thing is that we were rather ready for it, but the strike still does not stop. In war, the level of casualties is not exactly known, but we will not be mistaken in saying that this is already the most difficult war in Russia since the Great Patriotic War. Taking into account the accumulated losses in the Donbass since 2014, this is definitely the largest and most severe. And she continues. And the enemy is not going to give up at all.

Worse, they are now planning to destroy us, in general . And they will beat until the final - so that we never get up. The tasks have already been clearly and unambiguously outlined in one form or another: undermining the military, scientific and economic potential, exclusion from the world, creating a ghetto with us inside. This is a very bad fact, but it is real, and if you just say “Uncles, don’t hit”, the uncles will say exactly one thing: hurray, they are broken, you need to finish them off.

We have come to the edge . Russia is not only in a state of war - the enemy has orders of magnitude more resources. The enemy, of course, is not Ukraine, Ukraine is the source of cannon fodder, the askari of the real opponent.

And to cope with this enemy - not only to win, but simply to preserve itself, to resist - Russia can only do one way.

We will have to become more effective than the enemy . More adaptive. Flexible. It is better to predict the behavior of the enemy, it is better to predict the consequences of your own steps. We cannot afford the kind of mistakes that Europe can make, that the US can make, that even China can make.

Russia is a superpower, but with one huge caveat. It is a superpower with the least resources in existence. We are in the big leagues, but with the shortest bench. We are the underdog in any fight, we are not the favorite in any confrontation. We have fewer people, less money, fewer troops and less influence in the world than any other superpower.

So, it is necessary to use what is available as efficiently as possible.

But this is not the case now. Now we are making mistakes that cost the whole country dearly. We swing for a very long time before we start doing something, and often we are late. This applies to the industry - even with the localization of the production of engines for combat helicopters, they were pulled to the last, and many positions, including sophisticated equipment for oil production, have not yet been localized. This applies to solutions for the military - we still have enough "experts" to explain that UAVs and "smart" aerial bombs are not so necessary. This applies to the view of the world as a whole: it seems that the wave of confiscations of property from Russian oligarchs and the freezing of foreign exchange reserves came as a surprise to many - “they can’t…” We are aware of the existing trends by the time they are already starting to hit us in the forehead.

Reforms are needed to become a more efficient society. We need a very serious renewal of personnel at various levels of the country's leadership. We need working social elevators. We need less regulation and more freedom for local initiative. We need a major revision of the relationship between government and business. Relations between government and society. Capitals and regions. Relations within society - people with each other. In recent years, bans and lockdowns have become an almost universal way to deal with any threat to the Russian authorities - but bans cannot win the fight, and the future is not forged by bans.

However, a no less difficult challenge awaits the country on this road. It is necessary to reform the country right in the course of the ongoing war, and at the same time avoid chaos and change out of control. Gorbachev accidentally destroyed the USSR in this way: well-intentioned reforms were carried out without a clear understanding of how they would work and what consequences they would lead to. As a result, the Soviet regime disappeared, and the country, which had been put together for centuries, collapsed in a matter of years. Now you have to be smarter and show more will, determination and flexibility of mind.

Russia will change very seriously from within.

Otherwise, we're done.


Posted by: badanov 2022-05-14
http://www.rantburg.com/poparticle.php?ID=632871