0139 Part four of Diesen’s book covers Russia, resurgent in the spring of neomodernism and the autumn of geoeconomics.

Russia, like any vigorous civilisation, is inclined to gemeinschaft.  However, encounters with the West motivates Russian leaders to prioritize gesellschaft, often to the extreme.  Diesen tells some history.

0140 Here is how I see his story.  It is sloppier than Diesen’s account.  But, it may do.

Russia establishes itself as a land-based power without land-based ships.  So, it’s mostly about horses until the Germans roll in with mechanical vehicles in the 1910s and 1940s.

St. Petersburg is constructed as Russia’s window to the West.

After Napoleon’s failed invasion, Russia is looking pretty good until something odd happens.  Russia tries to take Crimea from the decadent Ottoman Empire, only to find the British declaring war.

0141 Why do the British fight to protect to Ottoman Empire?

Well, it turns out that the Ottoman Empire owes the British banks the pound-equivalent of a decade’s worth of British industrial production.  The war is not about the integrity of the British Empire.  This war is about Russia inadvertently giving the Ottomans an excuse not to pay interest on their enormous debt.

Russia gets its military clock cleaned twice in the 1850s because of debt oppression in Turkey.

0142 (Incidentally, the so-called American “civil war” (1860-1864 AD) is another precocious example of unfettered financial capitalism.  The banks of the North (say, New York) loan Southern plantation owners so much money that repayment is not an option.  So, instead of surrendering their property, the Southern elites sign up their fellow citizens in a campaign to resolve the issue by breaking the Southern states away from the Northern states… er, I mean… the so-called “Union”.)

Historical parallels between America and Russia are unnerving in this regard.

In the mid to late 1800s, gesellschaft is in the air.  America frees the slaves of African descent.  Russia frees the serfs.  America sees the rise of corporate monopolies.  Russia sees the appearance of wealthy middle class farmers.  America sees the west as the new frontier.  Dostoyevski sees the east as Russia’s new frontier.

0143 In America, the Federal Reserve is created in 1913, right before America intervenes in the First Battle Among the Enlightenment Gods.  The Russian Revolution starts in 1918, as the Battle ends.

In the 1960s, during the Third Battle of the Enlightenment Gods, Western civilisation enters the winter of sovereignty and the summer of geoeconomics.

One third of the way into the winter of sovereignty, in 1989, the Soviet Union dissolves and America falls under the spell of Big Government (il)Liberalism.

In America, in 1988, George H. Bush, formerly head of the Central Intelligence Agency is elected president of the USA.  He reverses the Reagan revolution and sets a course for further growth of America’s federal government.

0144 What happens next?

Then, Bill Clinton is elected in 1992 (due to a third party candidate, Ross Perot, and the unpopularity of Bush) and um… here, the story gets foggy.  It is as if there is an information blockade on what happens to Russia during the Yeltsin years. What were Western financial capitalists up to?

Diesen is not really clear on this.  But, I bet the story is incredible, because a veritable nobody, Vladimir Putin, appears out of nowhere and foils… whatever the unfettered financial capitalists are doing.

0145 Well, if the British banks saddled the Ottoman Empire with enough debt that the gemeinschaft in Turkey could never repay, and if the New York banks saddled plantation owners with enough debt that the Southern gemeinschaft had to be called to war, then I imagine that the former Republics of the Soviet Union receive similar advice, from Western “money managers”, about how to manage their sovereign properties.  Surely, Russian leaders could borrow… um… enormous sums… to um… keep the economy going.

0146 When the gesellschaft lend money to the gemeinschaft, or when the gesellschaft take out loans in the name of the gemeinschaft, then the gemeinschaft become slaves to those debts.

What is loaning a person or a sovereign so much money that the loan can never be repaid by that person or the people?

The answer is “immoral”.