Recently, a friend recommended a book about Russia in the 1990s. We're all vaguely aware of that country's collapse in that period, but we are scarcely aware of the scale and magnitude. It is very relevant to the current riots in the US.

(Incidentally, that decade does a lot more to explain the resiliency (and astonishing levels of public support) of Vladimir Putin and his regime than its authoritarian facets.)

Between 1992 and 1998, "excess deaths" (a term we're all now sadly familiar with because of Covid) in Russia were 3 million. By contrast, during World War II, they were 1.7 million, and if you know anything about what the Nazis did to Russia, that tells the whole story.

Previously eradicated diseases like tuberculosis returned with a vengeance, with the collapse of the health care system. Alcoholism and associated ills skyrocketed, as well as all forms of drug abuse (Russia, as a mafia-controlled state, quickly became a drug trade platform).

In the mid-1990s between five and TEN percent of newborn children every year were abandoned. Imagine the scale of societal desperation that causes something like that.

This unspeakable calamity on a continental scale is what happens when the authority of the State collapses.

"Law and order" is not some political slogan. It is the basis for any sort of life any of us would recognize as human. It is not negotiable. It is arduous, and it is precious.

You want to talk about privilege? How about the first world privilege that allows you to have a roof, to sleep in a bed, to have pointless arguments on Twitter. There is nothing more pathetic, more delusionally destructive, than a petit bourgeois with a revolutionary thrill.

Everybody on this website is a spoiled child.

Do some of the people rioting have legitimate grievances? Let us say for the sake of argument that they do. That is irrelevant. First, public order must be restored, "by any means necessary."

Which is a precondition for how a civilization might have a discussion about how to address whatever legitimate grievances there may be. This is not debatable. It cannot be debatable.

Erratum: the excess death figure is World War I, not World War II. But I think the overall point still does.

Since I’ve been asked: the book is "Godfather of the Kremlin" and it’s very good, but on that subject I would recommend "The Oligarchs" more.

Relevant pages. They really are worth reading in full. A society where order collapses isn’t pretty. 1/2

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