Monthly Archives: December 2009

Surviving Collapse Part 1

By AK | Published: December 21, 2009
As regular readers will know, I am rather fascinated by the phenomenon of collapse, i.e. the relatively quick fall in socio-political complexity that tends to accompany the fall of nations, empires, and civilizations. Now it’s all well and good to theorize about “diminishing returns to complexity” (Tainter) or to construct computer models to project  world [...]
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Freedom, Welfare, and the Future

By AK | Published: December 12, 2009
The welfare state, or what we conceive of as such today, is a relatively recent phenomenon. Although pre-modern states did perform some pro-welfare functions such as regulating prices and wages, maintaining workhouses for the poor and even a limited form of targeted social support[1], this spending was framed not in terms of the state’s fulfillment [...]
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Russia’s Sex Traditions

By AK | Published: December 9, 2009
Sean recently suggested Russianists study the history of smell in Russia. I have an even better idea: a history of sex in Russia, or rather my translation (PDF) of the tabloid article Сексуальные традиции на Руси (Russian Sexual Traditions). It’s historically and culturally inaccurate in more than a few places, but will hopefully make for a [...]
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Interview @ Siberian Light

By AK | Published: December 7, 2009
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10 Myths about Russia’s Demography

By AK | Published: December 7, 2009
This post tries to debunk some popular, but misguided, views on demographic trends in today’s Russia. These consist of the perception that Russia is in a demographic “death spiral” that dooms it to national decline (Biden, Eberstadt, NIC, CIA, Stratfor, etc). Some extreme pessimists even predict that ethnic Russians – ravaged by AIDS, infertility and alcoholism [...]
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Lessons from Byzantium

By AK | Published: December 5, 2009
I finally watched the film Гибель Империи. Византийский урок (Death of an Empire: the Byzantine Lesson), narrated by Archimandrite Tikhon Shevkunov, the father-confessor of Vladimir Putin. This film takes a stylized interpretation of the decline and fall of the Byzantine Empire – the root cause of which is attributed to mystical factors such as loss of faith [...]
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Cliodynamics: Mathematizing History

By AK | Published: December 4, 2009
One of the most interesting emerging sciences today, in my opinion, is cliodynamics. Their practitioners attempt to come to with mathematical models of history to explain “big history” – things like the rise of empires, social discontent, civil wars, and state collapse. To the casual observer history may appear to be chaotic and fathomless, devoid [...]
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Review of “Guns, Germs, and Steel” (J. Diamond)

By AK | Published: December 3, 2009
While trawling through my computer archives, I stumbled across this book review of Jared Diamond’s “Guns, Germs, and Steel” from five years ago. Overall, it’s a great book, better than his follow-up “Collapse”, which is also interesting – especially in the psychological aspects of “collapse”, like creeping normalcy and “landscape amnesia” – but far from [...]
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