1. Agenda: things to be done. Of course, everybody on Substack (or any social media) has an agenda, or they wouldn't be here.
3. There is a great diversity of voices and themes. An unsystematic reading of social media will inevitably give you a distorted idea of what people (all people, or all that are on social media) think. The proverbial echo chambers rule.
3. I also live in Europe (Austria) half time. Life is comfortable and well-regulated. It's hard to imagine Austrians rebelling and starting a civil war. But it was equally hard to imagine the Yellow Vest movement in France before it happened. So what was the energy that fueled it?
4. Indicators of instability, such as antigovernmental demonstrations and violent riots are trending up everywhere in Europe. Will they simply blow out, or are they a precursor of something more serious? I don't know.
I feel like everyone who posts on Substack has an agenda to push or an ax to grind.
I see stories like this about the USA with almost exactly the same theme and tone; pining for better times when life was easier or looking forward to the future with dread.
None of these match my experience living in the United States or in Europe (Spain).
I am squarely in the middle class; 57 years old and still working for the Man.
I also own a small business with over 15 employees which is far more difficult than merely being employed.
Life would be much easier if I just punched a clock every day.
Life felt easier in Europe where nobody I know aspired to own a small business.
Everyone aspires for a government job.
But, since many people live in large, multi-generational homes with extended family, there’s relatively little homelessness or immiseration.
I know my view is out of the mainstream; everybody wants to predict a Civil War in the near future.
I just don’t see it.
Plus, with Social Media, everybody has a voice.
Perhaps the ability to go on Facebook or Substack and rant will let people vent their vitriol and will keep them from going out in the streets and punching a cop.
Feelin' ya. Certainly true that online platforms provide a handy setting for catharsis. Here's a pet hypothesis: US Americans suffer from terminal ego issues and can't handle anything much that seems to be an affront to our hood, club, in-group, party, class, ethnicity, etc. Identitarianism in full flower, and it's widespread across political lines. All because so many crave social validation and operate on extrinsic motivation which invariably leads to frustration. Or something like that.
Conditions and prices in Russia vary a lot from région to région. My relatives bought not long ago 6 acres of land for the equivalent of about 60 thousand dollars, 150 km north if St Petersburg, just on the cost of the finskij zaliv, in a quite touristy place
When I go to Russia I notice that prices for food, taxi, transport, restaurants etc are about 2 or 2.5 times cheaper than the prices for the same things in France, which are probably quite cheaper than in the US already. Price for flats in the center of St Petersburg are about 2 or 2.5 thousand dollars per square meters even for fully renovated flats. I'm actually planning to buy a flat this summer,if I manage to.
Flat communal charges, electricity, etc are way cheaper than in France.
As for small farming, I have no stats, but when we go to the family's datcha in Beloostrov, which is about 30 km from St Petersburg, we buy local goat milk and cheese and some other local farming products, which was not the case even 10 years ago.
Russia has changed a lot especially in the last 10 years or so, on the positive side. Infrastructure is a lot better.
What is lacking in the Russian countryside compared to France is organised community life, the network of associations that enable people who have a common interest to regroup and find common solutions or even have leisure activities together.
Some time ago I saw a documentary series on how people live nowadays in former Soviet states that are now sovereign countries. Yes their living improved like your friend describes in the article. But the general feeling also was that community feelings faded with that. People that used to visit and talk to eachother as all being part of the USSR didn't do that anymore....
??? I live in Norway, Russia is my main travel, holiday and week-ends (when direct flight Oslo-SPb) since around 2005. Also by car, I drive to Stockholm, Baltic ferry and border. I have been more in countryside and in regional cities than in bigger ones in these last twenty years.
One can't write "Russian countryside today" from one opinion of someone in one village.
Btw I know the Luga area, these days I use to go to SPb from Pskov, after a bus from Riga. There is the express regional train of the kind Lastochka doing the Pskov-Luga-SPb route in 3,5 hrs.
Some observations in the little report of your friend made me laugh, for instance this one "almost every house has a car (or even two)". USSR and the times of state managed collective transportations was gone long ago!
btw. why don´t you travel and stay in Russia instead?
I've just started digging into Peter's work, and I find it fascinating. I grew up on a farm in the Midwest USA. There are small towns even in the USA that have had this kind of fate happen to them, though there were no "remote" workers when I was growing up. I find it so fascinating that agriculture/food production shows these same patterns of early autonomy with diverse crops and surplus production like in Republican Roman to the commoditization stage like the latifundia of the Empire.
I remember reading Laura Ingalls Wilder's Farmer Boy as a child and asking my dad why we didn't grow any food on our farm like the family in the book. He went into a long explanation of the economics of modern farming that explained why it made total sense not to grow anything directly edible by humans on our farmland. That's a slight exaggeration. We did raise and eat our own pork, chicken, and beef, but we only butchered the chickens ourselves and not even that consistently.
Random thoughts inspired by comments:
1. Agenda: things to be done. Of course, everybody on Substack (or any social media) has an agenda, or they wouldn't be here.
3. There is a great diversity of voices and themes. An unsystematic reading of social media will inevitably give you a distorted idea of what people (all people, or all that are on social media) think. The proverbial echo chambers rule.
3. I also live in Europe (Austria) half time. Life is comfortable and well-regulated. It's hard to imagine Austrians rebelling and starting a civil war. But it was equally hard to imagine the Yellow Vest movement in France before it happened. So what was the energy that fueled it?
4. Indicators of instability, such as antigovernmental demonstrations and violent riots are trending up everywhere in Europe. Will they simply blow out, or are they a precursor of something more serious? I don't know.
I feel like everyone who posts on Substack has an agenda to push or an ax to grind.
I see stories like this about the USA with almost exactly the same theme and tone; pining for better times when life was easier or looking forward to the future with dread.
None of these match my experience living in the United States or in Europe (Spain).
I am squarely in the middle class; 57 years old and still working for the Man.
I also own a small business with over 15 employees which is far more difficult than merely being employed.
Life would be much easier if I just punched a clock every day.
Life felt easier in Europe where nobody I know aspired to own a small business.
Everyone aspires for a government job.
But, since many people live in large, multi-generational homes with extended family, there’s relatively little homelessness or immiseration.
I know my view is out of the mainstream; everybody wants to predict a Civil War in the near future.
I just don’t see it.
Plus, with Social Media, everybody has a voice.
Perhaps the ability to go on Facebook or Substack and rant will let people vent their vitriol and will keep them from going out in the streets and punching a cop.
Feelin' ya. Certainly true that online platforms provide a handy setting for catharsis. Here's a pet hypothesis: US Americans suffer from terminal ego issues and can't handle anything much that seems to be an affront to our hood, club, in-group, party, class, ethnicity, etc. Identitarianism in full flower, and it's widespread across political lines. All because so many crave social validation and operate on extrinsic motivation which invariably leads to frustration. Or something like that.
Conditions and prices in Russia vary a lot from région to région. My relatives bought not long ago 6 acres of land for the equivalent of about 60 thousand dollars, 150 km north if St Petersburg, just on the cost of the finskij zaliv, in a quite touristy place
When I go to Russia I notice that prices for food, taxi, transport, restaurants etc are about 2 or 2.5 times cheaper than the prices for the same things in France, which are probably quite cheaper than in the US already. Price for flats in the center of St Petersburg are about 2 or 2.5 thousand dollars per square meters even for fully renovated flats. I'm actually planning to buy a flat this summer,if I manage to.
Flat communal charges, electricity, etc are way cheaper than in France.
As for small farming, I have no stats, but when we go to the family's datcha in Beloostrov, which is about 30 km from St Petersburg, we buy local goat milk and cheese and some other local farming products, which was not the case even 10 years ago.
Russia has changed a lot especially in the last 10 years or so, on the positive side. Infrastructure is a lot better.
What is lacking in the Russian countryside compared to France is organised community life, the network of associations that enable people who have a common interest to regroup and find common solutions or even have leisure activities together.
Sadly, the neglect or outright exploitation of Russia outside of Moscow and St. Petersburg has been going on for a long time.
https://www.aljazeera.com/gallery/2014/5/2/russias-decaying-villages
https://borgenproject.org/over-half-of-russian-population-at-poverty-line/
https://imrussia.org/en/analysis/3230-moscow-vs-regions-who-%E2%80%9Cfeeds%E2%80%9D-whom
Some time ago I saw a documentary series on how people live nowadays in former Soviet states that are now sovereign countries. Yes their living improved like your friend describes in the article. But the general feeling also was that community feelings faded with that. People that used to visit and talk to eachother as all being part of the USSR didn't do that anymore....
??? I live in Norway, Russia is my main travel, holiday and week-ends (when direct flight Oslo-SPb) since around 2005. Also by car, I drive to Stockholm, Baltic ferry and border. I have been more in countryside and in regional cities than in bigger ones in these last twenty years.
One can't write "Russian countryside today" from one opinion of someone in one village.
Btw I know the Luga area, these days I use to go to SPb from Pskov, after a bus from Riga. There is the express regional train of the kind Lastochka doing the Pskov-Luga-SPb route in 3,5 hrs.
Some observations in the little report of your friend made me laugh, for instance this one "almost every house has a car (or even two)". USSR and the times of state managed collective transportations was gone long ago!
btw. why don´t you travel and stay in Russia instead?
I've just started digging into Peter's work, and I find it fascinating. I grew up on a farm in the Midwest USA. There are small towns even in the USA that have had this kind of fate happen to them, though there were no "remote" workers when I was growing up. I find it so fascinating that agriculture/food production shows these same patterns of early autonomy with diverse crops and surplus production like in Republican Roman to the commoditization stage like the latifundia of the Empire.
I remember reading Laura Ingalls Wilder's Farmer Boy as a child and asking my dad why we didn't grow any food on our farm like the family in the book. He went into a long explanation of the economics of modern farming that explained why it made total sense not to grow anything directly edible by humans on our farmland. That's a slight exaggeration. We did raise and eat our own pork, chicken, and beef, but we only butchered the chickens ourselves and not even that consistently.
So many connections with these ideas.