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The Solari Report – 16 Apr 2009
Dmitry Orlov is an engineer, author and blogger. He was born in Leningrad and moved to the United States at the age of 12. He has a BS in Computer Engineering and an MA in Applied Linguistics.
Dmitry was an eyewitness to the collapse of the Soviet Union government, currency and economy over several extended visits to his Russian homeland between the late 1980s and mid-1990s. His observations are described in his book, Reinventing Collapse, published last summer.
His articles on the Russian collapse experience and what Americans can learn from it are widely read, including, Closing the Collapse Gap, which compares the collapse-preparedness of the USA and the USSR, and Social Collapse Best Practices (video version.)
On this Thursday evening’s Solari Report, in addition to covering current market events and your latest questions, I will be speaking with Dmitry about the possibility of a collapse in the United States and what we can learn from the Russian experience as we move together through tough economic times.
If you are a subscriber to The Solari Report, you can post your questions at your private panel or feel free to also post them at this blog post.
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There are way too many realistic similarities between today’s USA and the former Soviet Union to address in a short note, the problem is which are relevant to the topics at hand. It’s hard for me to imagine whom Orlov might be working for if he is an agent of disinformation. He arrived as a pre-teen to the states before the fall of communism, and now I’d be surprised indeed if any remnant of the KGB remained in Russia to run an agent who had the good fortune to be marooned in America during the shredding of the iron curtain. Sometimes a Ruskie is just a Ruskie. By the way, the expat-Eastern Bloc immigrants I have met (way more than a few) are the most anti-communist, anti-Marxist people in my ken.
There are plenty of ways for the USA to come to ruin: one is for its leaders to let it be run into the ground by those who can, and do, do what they want, while a confused and disorganized public wonders what to do, if anything (that is if they notice anything is wrong, between commercials). Often, the government takes an active role in breaking things.
A huge USA/USSR equivalence is the powerlessness that the people have in affecting policy as enacted by their “leaders”. William Greider tackles this sad topic from the point of view of democratic failure well in his book “Who Will Tell the People”. Or, maybe he is in the pay of sinister foreign powers , too.
When the topic is “governing corruption”, a big difference is that today very few Americans–including some of the most cynical–have even a faint grasp of how bad things really are, but may more freely speculate on the topic; in Soviet Russia nearly all knew the score (including the Powers), but could say nothing publicly.
Maybe it’s that Clinton and Obama are really Summerians.
It is a fact that oil will run out, maybe sooner than most think (sorry abiotic-oil delusionists); it is true that that what waits in the wings to replace oil is inadequate to fill its shoes–at todays requirements, (sorry optimistic alternate/renewable-energy enthusiasts); and I fear that very few understand or can imagine what this means and how it could play out, thank you Orlov and Kunstler, you contentment destroying agents of realism, you.
Kindly insert, if possible, the phrase “and the still nominally Christian and Islamic societies, as well as in certain other traditional countries,” after the phrase “The essential difference between communism, as concretely occured with the Bolshevik revolution and the Maoist revolution…”
The essential difference between communism, as concretely occured with the Bolshevik revolution and the Maoist revolution, is the elimination of a view of man as having primarily a spiritual vocation–something which admittedly modern man generally has betrayed, but which the materialist conceptions deny explicitly and seek to destroy. The freedom to openly practice one’s religion is the essential freedom. Without it, everything else is threatened, for the simple reason that the human being is no longer conceived as human, but simply as a clever beast, as “labor” and, at need, as a disposable “useless eater.” The sacred is the essence of all values. If it disappears all that is good will disappear in turn. The fact that it can be abused or betrayed is a completely separate issue. Yes, the US is riddled with errors, the “system” is corrupt, in many ways we are a menace to ecological equilibrium, and so on. But we maintain, to a very limited degree it is true, a sense of the sacred, a faith in a transcendent Reality which is the First Cause and the Last Judge. That is the crucial difference, the only one worth dying for.
Orlov said that the collapse of the USSR was triggered by fuel shortages.
If there was ever a severe fuel shortage in the US (real or manufactured), I imagine the easiest policies to implement in the next decade would be to lower the speed limit to 45 MPH and enforce it with cameras like the ones being installed in Maryland now.
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So (playing devil’s advocate), Dubya was a genius? For creating artificial demand for huge vehicles and shelters across the land?
So all those federal government subsidized SUVs could become very fuel efficient PER PASSENGER if you load each up with 8 or more people and drive at 25 MPH. Interesting.
@Jack
As a European I’m always quite surprised how Americans tend to be able to think only 1-dimensionally. As if there are only two governance models possible in the world: democracy and communism. As if the Democrats and the Republicans represent two outer ends of a continuum. In philosophy that is called a ‘false dichotomy’.
Whether Orlov is ‘a communist’ is totally immaterial; this question cannot be answered because what communism means in the US is something totally different than what it means elsewhere. The Soviet Union was not run according the principles of communism just as the US is not run according to the principles of democracy.
In any case, state governance models, whatever they are called, are getting less relevant nowadays, as obviously transnationalism, globalisation, etc have done a great job undermining sovereignty of nation-states. In that respect, I think Orlov points to the US as a geographical area, rather than as a political entity; which kind of makes your point about his loyalty futile.
Ps I’m myself not a communist in any sense of the word
Catherine:
Thanks for providing the Dmitry links. His insight has given me some ideas for filling in a few personal ‘gaps’. We can either have faith in government and industry (centralization of power and finance) or we can place our faith, energy, and resources in ourselves and community (de-centralization). We each have to decide which of these two choices, or possibly some combination of the two, will work best for us. Someone once told me that many of the Amish don’t choose their lifestyle of independence because it’s easy or fun, but simply for the peace of mind of knowing they are not placing their dependency and freedom in the hands of someone or some entity that may not have their best interests at heart.
It would appear, in this current climate, that the more intermediaries we have between ourselves and what is critical for survival…the more chance there is of default.
Thanks for sharing.