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>What it could not survive was the cutting of its grain supply, and the end of the administrative apparatus that ensured its regular delivery. one of the most
by trhway 7y ago
>What it could not survive was the cutting of its grain supply, and the end of the administrative apparatus that ensured its regular delivery.
one of the most recent examples - USSR - the low oil prices of the 198x coupled with the peak cold in the 80 years cycle meant that the resulting low agricultural yield couldn't be supplanted by the required massive import of food, so that time the Russian Empire (USSR) cracked. 80 years before that the Russian Empire had revolution of 1905-06, and while that revolution failed it resulted in a lot of deep changes to the country, in particular agrarian reforms (including introducing peasants' private property on agrarian lands) and huge expansion of Russian agriculture into Siberian regions.
So, i think that one can estimate the probability of "How do you know if you’re living through the death of a specific government instance/structure/order." by looking at the basic Maslow layers - food and security. This is for example why China Communist Party is hell bent on delivering growth and prosperity and stomping out hard measure style any threats to stability, be it coronavirus or dissidents.
- blackrock 7y agoI am rather surprised by how Russia is able to maintain their large hold on territory across Siberia. Surely, the people on the Eastern front, is highly genetically different, than from those on the western side, which is closer to being European. I assume it’s because of the threat of nukes, which kept the size of the Russian Federation the way that it is.
- ForHackernews 7y agoyeah, or maybe there's more to a nation than some grade-school notion of "genetics". Russians have a shared language, cultural and religious traditions.
- bushin 7y agono we have not
- krageon 7y agoWhat does genetic similarity have to do with unity? This is the "race" farce packaged into a new and exciting flavour of wrongness, but that doesn't make it any less wrong.
- ngcc_hk 7y agoThat is twisted I faced everyday these days. Instead of horror of china it is implicit a praise that it can maintain its control of the empire and suppress the virus etc. It is the very problem of suppression that give the problem of spreading. If there is a freedom of speech ... or it is Italy so we can get the message (by having people on the ground instead of no western / free media). But instead of this China control, not just internal but also WHO. It not just kill its people which like cultural revolution and big leap forward, it killed outside. It even tried to blame the very country which has the index patient who fly out from wuhan the day before it was shut down. And that is great and ok. We should only talk about the collapse of past empire. Let us accept even though I am not, what value it brings. Should we still do a few last stand.