What is too young to die, and what is the age after which most would accept that they probably lived a full life? — TiredThinker

Too young to die is an age younger than the person making this remark, who likely remembers that he or she was quite vibrant and full of life in that age.

I've notice that usually people talk about people that have died before 50 or in their 50's as having "died young". After 60 dying starts to become quite normal and it becomes more ordinary and normal as the age increases. Nobody assumes an 100-year old to live decades more.

Also when parents have to bury their children, I would say then the normal rhythm of life has broken and you could say the children have died too young. Children are meant to bury their parents, not vice versa.

I assume the number refers to actually the possible group that made the attack. Possibly. Not the sponsors and those who got them together. But the idea of a private non-state actor doing it is in my view remote. But not impossible.

It indeed would be quite incredible if six divers would be having a beer and one of them thought: "You know, we could go and blow up Nordstream 2."

With hard meaning as you referred to only a nation-state having the ability for the strike, sabotage on the high seas is still possible for a private entity to do. It is possible. For example shooting down a satellite is something that only nation-states can do (perhaps with the exception of Elon Musk focusing the attention of SpaceX on the mission, but that wouldn't go unnoticed).

. All the intelligence agencies are saying this is a very difficult operation with either state-level actors or those with state training. — Isaac

Yet not impossible for someone without the training. Professional Scuba divers on the private market exist. Yet there come the difficulties of just who would gather them without state backing. The motivation of someone else than a non-state actor would be confusing.

Operating in that depth isn't impossible. For example the CIA-operation of trying to lift a Soviet nuclear submarine from the bottom of the Pacific Ocean in 1974, Project Azorian, was partly successful. The sub K-129 was at the depth of 4900 meters. The pipeline on the bottom of the Baltic Sea is something like 54 to 75 meters, at the deepest 210 meters or so (and not so deep where the sabotage happened). Hence Project Azorian would be an operation that you need a state-level actor, and an Superpower actor, even if Howard Hughes was brought as a disguise to the CIA operation.

Your desperation is showing. — Isaac

Yeah right. I think we know who is desperate here...

Well, if it really would be private individuals or entities, then I guess it's an issue for the police to solve. Depth? Recreational diving limit is around 30m or so, but for instance with an atmospheric diving suit, a diver can go to 2000 ft (610 meters). Getting explosives? That's not a problem, steel in concrete casing isn't so difficult to break with explosives. Shaped charges etc aren't technically so difficult to do anyway. Hence it's not so hard to destroy a pipeline.

(Parts of Nordstream 2: this picture shows how thin the pipeline actually was)


Definately such underwater thing could be done privately, you just have to have professional divers and not your average mentally unstable terrorist. Yet if this was a "private venture", still the motivation is a question.

Interesting, even if a bit off topic, which mini-series come to mind?
(As history and war-movie friend Band of Brothers come to mind.)

Great OP, and I am still grappling with it. I think where you lose me is the notion that computation and causation are somehow equivalent. — hypericin

I would say in the other way: if you think that computation and causation are equivalent, then you think that mathematics and physics are equivalent. Not just that physics is accurately modeled using mathematics.

First of all, there do exist mathematical objects that are true, but not computable.

when the story is that this is "Putin's war" that no one in autocratic dictatorship Russia actually supports? :chin: — Tzeentch

I think there are some that do support Putin and do think it's time to "make Russia Great again". Or as it's put: "Defend Fortress Russia from the evil West". Just as there are those who oppose his policies.

There's evil in there somewhere, isn't there? What do Ukrainians think when they see Russian soldiers coming their way? — frank

Yes there is. The worst is when you get people to think that you can make the World a better place by killing certain people and with that radical act create a better society. That you have to eradicate the subhumans. Or the rich. Or whoever and then you will have a new better society. That I think is really evil.

And I can understand just why people will fall for this kind of thinking. The injustices of the present can be so enormous and it can create hate.

Or then you kill the people and want to turn the landscape into a field where your horses can graize. Or you create an artificial desert to win an insurgency. No people, no insurgents.

I don't think the individual soldier is evil.

Yes. That's right. I do think those things. That'll be why I said them.

Have you got anything more than your incredulity to offer? — Isaac

I'm just quoting what you have said. What's wrong with that?

Oh, I could add that you think the Donbas republics are independent whereas somehow Ukraine, after many free elections and ruled by a party that didn't even exist in 2014 is somehow is related to "a US staged coup" and pawns of the US, just like Putin says.

So if I disagree that the People's Republics of Donetsk and Luhansk aren't independent and without any resemblance to democracy, or that there would have been a huge toll that Ukrainians would have had to suffer if they would have surrendered, you will likely go off with your ad hominem attacks.

I just simply disagree with what you say about the situation in Ukraine, which you have said repeatedly doesn't interest you much.

He's a good example of how we each have the potential for evil and good. He was an American soldier on the wrong side of history, so evil, — frank

I assume that many here would be far more harsher on John McCain.

Being in uniform for your country doesn't make oneself evil in my view. If you perpetrate war crimes, that's evil. If those that served in the Vietnam are evil, then I guess all that served in the War on Terror, invasion of Afghanistan and Iraq are even more evil. At least there was a South Vietnam, which was attacked by North Vietnam, which you didn't have with Afghanistan and Iraq.

Our society has compartmentalized war and warfare to quite an extent.

It doesn't help the victim to stand fast to the narrative of helplessness. — frank

Victimhood points to helplessness (or as @unenlightened said, needs help), someone subjected to oppression, hardship, or mistreatment or being duped or tricked.

I agree that the way being a victim is presented or portrayed can be quite annoying passive-aggresive behaviour, especially those declaring themselves to be a victim. And many times the target of violence isn't helpless or shouldn't be helpless.

Yet if we talk for example about someone being or ending up as a casualty, it doesn't have these connotations: if a soldier ends up as a casualty, being wounded or a fatality in war, there isn't this nuance. This can be seen from the way in the US a veteran having a Purple Heart is quite respected. Nobody (perhaps with the exception of the draft-dodger Donald Trump) will think a Purple Heart receiver is a loser. Or a helpless victim.

Grown ups are discussing how best to end a bloody and dreadful war.

If you children want to discuss who "the baddies" are perhaps you could do so on a more suitable forum. Don't Disney have a little chat room you could use. — Isaac

Says the "grown-up" who thinks that Ukraine should have surrendered, blames Zelensky for not surrendering, because he himself sees no difference in what flag flies over Kiev, Russian or Ukrainian. And says that there wouldn't be much bad consequences for that surrender.

Zelensky bears some moral responsibility for the deaths if he chooses to continue fighting when he could have take a less harmful other option. — Isaac

I'm pointing out that the terms offered by Russia are in this specific case, not applying to every single case in the world (which you bizarrely assumed), are such that it's not worth thousands of lives and huge indebtedness just to avoid them. — Isaac

As such it's not correct to say that we ought to support the Ukrainians in whatever they choose. We don't have any obligation to share their concern about their national identity, we do have an obligation to share their concern about their welfare.

This is relevant because if ceding territory to Russia ends the war and if there's no good reason to think that doing so will create a major loss in welfare, then we ought to support such a solution, even if the Ukrainians themselves don't. — Isaac

Ukrainians are not an homogeneous mass, we don't even know if they all support Zelensky's current strategy, and even if we did all the measures usually in place to ensure well-informed mandates are missing. There's no reason at all to assume 'Ukrainians' are calling the shots here and even if they were, there's no moral incentive to act on their expressed preference. — Isaac

I have no interest in why (some of) the Ukrainians want to remain outside of Russian control. — Isaac

What's up with Lavrov? Lying? Following the script? Bullshitting? Propagandizing? Expressing his belief? — jorndoe

Russia is really taking the historical discourse from the Soviet Union: the Lithurgy. The Lithurgy is the official line and you talk the official line to show that you are totally on with the official line. It can be a lie, it can be just nonsense or nothing, but you repeat it to show that you are an ardent backer of the regime.

Actually to make people to talk about a "special military operation" and make it illegal to talk about a war when this truly a war in every way, is a power play. The objective is to show the power Putin has and for people to show their unwavering faith to the leadership. The objective is to make people think twice what they say and avoid certain words like a white American avoids using the n-word. Hence when Putin declares that this war was basically started by the West and the Ukrainian henchmen working for the West against Russia, then the foreign minister naturally repeats the line. Anyone not repeating this can be problematic.

This is quite similar to when Soviet Union attacked Finland. Then it was actually Finland that attacked Soviet Union. And then there was the People's government lead by Otto Kuusinen that the Soviet Union came to help to relieve the working class, the proletariat, from the evil capitalist imperialist subjugating Finland.

So if it worked under Stalin, why wouldn't it work now?

(BTW, Trump actually wanted similar thing from his subordinates right from the start when he declared that on his inauguration day the crowds were larger than Obama had. A good spokesperson that Trump wanted would have followed that line and wouldn't have cared about actual pictures showing this isn't true.)

Social constructs suggest a consensus and a collaboration, and I doubt such a thing has occurred. — NOS4A2

Well, I think for many today, to be a citizen of their country doesn't mean so much if anything. You can see it from the comments even here. But there is enough consensus about citizenship around: just try to go to another country that you need a visa without one (or passport). Outside of your country, you will be looked as an US Citizen, irrelevant how much you relate to being one.

One can understand the self-identification with a race, though, especially in America, where these distinctions have been pounded into our heads our whole lives, even after the unspooling of the human genome has discredited them. For many it was a matter of life and death. But nowadays it's just de rigueur. — NOS4A2

Even if it's a bit different in Latin America, it's the same problem in the continent. Class division has become a race division, which makes the issue so toxic. The correlation with poverty and races shows this. In Latin America it's quite obvious with the divide between the Native American (Indian) population and those that have European ancestry. And the Spanish caste system has made it as bad in Latin America.

Desperately trying to see something wrong when their isn't.

Actions are important. Like who actually attacked whom. And then what here the attacker says is also important. Even if understandably he portrays the culprit for the war to be the one attacked. Just like Stalin's Soviet Union declared that Finland had attacked the Soviet Union. Or Poland German with Hitler.

You should be given some kind of a strawman-prize.

I am against what they say. I would call them “social impositions” because they were born of pseudoscience and imposed upon entire peoples. Besides, the pseudo-scientific justifications for applying these labels have long been discredited. — NOS4A2

Social constructs are a good way to think about these issues. Let's first define it:"A social construct or construction is the meaning, notion, or connotation placed on an object or event by a society, and adopted by that society with respect to how they view or deal with the object or event."

Someone defining himself as "American", meaning being a citizen of the US, or "British", is a clear social construct. We can easily understand that if history wouldn't have gone the way it did, those definitions would be different. And obviously they carry a lot legally in our societies and citizenship and the nation which people belong to means a lot to many. The naively stupid view is that when these are "just" social constructs and "invented", they are either false, irrelevant and don't matter.

Just talking about classes can get some angry as they either understand the term as castes, or then think it's just leftist nonsense. The juxtaposition between "white-collar" and "blue-collar" workers isn't so politically motivated, but basically again it's a social construct.

For me it seems that race relations have become a similar issue to Americans like Hitler and nazism to the Germans. It's obvious that slavery, segregation, Jim Crow and lynchings aren't the brightest side of American history. As the old saying goes, if you are losing a debate to a German, you can always go for the "Hitler-card". And if you have a Hitler-card, well, it comes to be so easy. And some do use them..

You call Putin a liar in one sentence and take his word in the next. — Tzeentch

Wrong, What I say what he speaks is important how Kremlin portrays this war, what is the narrative fed to the Russian people. And it's telling how he sees the West.

So if a politician lies, which they can, then it's irrelevant what he says at all???

Only now it's suddenly becomes possible for Putin to lie. — Isaac

?

I thought the classic denial from Putin of the "little green men" happened quite a long time ago. Heck, he should have not even come out with that one: some perhaps wouldn't still believe that Crimea was taken over by "Crimean volunteers".

Putin lies. That means we don't know what he really thinks from his speeches. — Isaac

Irrelevant

Actions matters, not what people really think, but what they do. And his speeches show clearly the way how the Kremlin now sees the war. It's also important understand how he portrays the West to the Russian public. Besides, there's nothing new to the fact that in Russia there are several words for truth. During Soviet times when talking to Soviets a big part of any discourse was the "lithurgy".

What should get over?

So you think it's basically a land grab? — frank

Basically yes.

What else would it be? Putin is talking of Donbas and Novorossiya as parts of Russia, now liberated from the "artificial country". The change of curriculum in schools and all what they intend to do makes it quite clear.

Or then you can believe that this is also an existential struggle for Russia as the West wants to destroy Russia and it's culture with Western decadence. And that's the "defensive" motivation to push borders of Russia forward.

A quote from Putin's speech, because it's important to understand what Putin is really saying:

The Western elite make no secret of their goal, which is, I quote, “Russia’s strategic defeat.” What does this mean to us? This means they plan to finish us once and for all. In other words, they plan to grow a local conflict into a global confrontation. This is how we understand it and we will respond accordingly, because this represents an existential threat to our country.

However, they too realize it is impossible to defeat Russia on the battlefield and are conducting increasingly aggressive information attacks against us targeting primarily the younger generation. They never stop lying and distorting historical facts as they attack our culture, the Russian Orthodox Church and other traditional religious organizations in our country.

Look what they are doing to their own people. It is all about the destruction of the family, of cultural and national identity, perversion and abuse of children, including pedophilia, all of which are declared normal in their life. They are forcing the priests to bless same-sex marriages. Bless their hearts, let them do as they please. Here is what I would like to say in this regard. Adult people can do as they please. We in Russia have always seen it that way and always will: no one is going to intrude into other people’s private lives, and we are not going to do it, either.

What is it about in your view (a year into it)? — frank

NATO expansion is one reason, but it was more of a figleaf than an actual reason for him to attack Ukraine as only massing troops to the border already got him clear signals that Ukraine wouldn't be part of NATO (with Germany saying so). Still actually Hungary objects Ukrainian NATO membership. Hence if Ukraine staying out of NATO would have been the only objective, no reason to start an all out war. Yet annexing territories should make it totally clear to everyone what the actual objectives are.

But of course now Putin depicts that the West has (and has always had) the intent to destroy Russia. He sees this as a long standing objective for the West. In his last speech Putin's biased history interpretation shows this well:

I would like to recall that, in the 1930s, the West had virtually paved the way to power for the Nazis in Germany. In our time, they started turning Ukraine into an “anti-Russia.” Actually, this project is not new. People who are knowledgeable about history at least to some extent realise that this project dates back to the 19th century. The Austro-Hungarian Empire and Poland had conceived it for one purpose, that is, to deprive Russia of these historical territories that are now called Ukraine. This is their goal. There is nothing new here; they are repeating everything.

And btw, just to show how in line with Putin some views on this thread are, here is the man himself explaining the culprit of this war:

Responsibility for inciting and escalating the Ukraine conflict as well as the sheer number of casualties lies entirely with the Western elites and, of course, today’s Kiev regime, for which the Ukrainian people are, in fact, not its own people. The current Ukrainian regime is serving not national interests, but the interests of third countries.

It's progressive, though I would sooner call it regressive since it has effectively worked to dial back the clock on the role of race in society some 50 years. - What can be considered "progressive" these days is basically a counter-movement to actual liberalism, and is basically its polar opposite. It's attempts at controlling speech and people's thoughts are eerily Orwellian, and authoritarian to the very core. — Tzeentch

I would add that the present tribalism and polarization works by those who oppose an ideology (left or right etc.) picking the worst, most fatuous examples there exists. Which usually is some odd extremist, who usually hasn't got anything in common with moderate views.

Also, I guess for politics it's the normal that centrist, moderate and consensus seeking views are attacked by those that we say to be on the far (left or right). The algorithms in the net / social media just exacerbate this. After all, a fight is more enjoyment to watch than people generally agreeing and having differences about the nuances.

For me the fact that people use racial categories to divide human beings doesn’t entail that races themselves are true in any way, social or otherwise. — NOS4A2

In any way? What about as social constructs?

Start with the US Census Bureau. Are you against what they say?

The U.S. Census Bureau collects racial data in accordance with the 1997 Office of Management and Budget standards on race and ethnicity. The data on race are based on self-identification and the categories on the form generally reflect a social definition of race. The categories are not an attempt to define race biologically, anthropologically, or genetically. Respondents can mark more than one race on the form to indicate their racial mixture.

At least it's just the media and not Putin himself. That would inch us closer to world war. — frank

In fact, Putin gave a "meh" to the membership application of Sweden and Finland. The only reaction was that Russia doesn't want permanent NATO bases, which in fact is quite unlikely.

Which actually goes against the cherished view (by some active participants here) that the war in Ukraine was only about NATO expansion.

The difference is that one involves weapons and the other involves people. — Isaac

The actual difference is just who are the belligerents. Try as much (as Putin does) to make supplying weapon to a belligerent an act of war, but it isn't. But as noted, some try to make it look that way.

Try to get that into "your little head".

Will it be they or us? — javi2541997

Or the question is, in line with @niki wonoto's gloomy OP, will we live to see that day? I'd have high hopes if I would live for 105 000 years. (Or would it be 210 000?)

The 'fact' about how significant multilateral agreements with weaker partners are relative to bilateral agreements with stronger ones, for example. Where's that 'fact' such that we can resolve this disagreement we have? — Isaac

I'm not sure what you are saying here.

A multilateral approach to security has it's benefits. Starting from NATO's article 1. Then comes the actual coordination between the armed forces between different countries. Something that didn't succeed so well in the former treaty organizations (CENTO and SEATO).

If you have the world's largest military, supported by the world's most influential government, on your side, that's all that matters. — Isaac

Yet you should understand the difference of between a) sending weapons to a country and b) defending it with your own troops.

This was evident before this escalation of the war with Ukraine. Yes, the US sent aid, and trained Ukrainian defence forces. In Finland or Sweden they don't train Finnish or Swedish troops, the train to fight here. When you have B-52s training to mine Swedish waters (to defend against possible landings), it's a bit different than sending (or selling) sea mines to Sweden.

when Tzeentch made that exact same argument about Ukraine's de facto reliance on the military support of the US you started bleating on about how important the support of all the other nations was. — Isaac

Because you assume that Europe is just made up of Lichtensteins. What I noted that actually countries like Poland and others have done their share also. In aggregate it starts to mean something.

This leads to the conclusion that, not only are there probably other intelligences, there are probably other intelligences far more advanced than our own. — Pantagruel

Yes, when you have about 100-200 billion galaxies in the universe and now something about probabilities.

And if we want to remind how fleeing our time is along the OP of this thread, we can observe our sent radio waves travelling the speed of light haven't made far in our galaxy:

(Ought to resemble a 105 000 light year diameter galaxy with a 200 diameter range)


And in addition, anybody with the capable technology to interact with us, the range for that interaction is half of that.

Biologically, the categories are false; socially, they're true. Being a social animal is a double-edged sword; we look for reasons to unite in groups and divide against other groups and find the stupidest ways of doing that. — Baden

Yet if it's biologically false, it's false. If it's socially true, it's a social construct. As you said above.

And that makes it different.

Thus you might then argue that some women being witches is true because a lot of people believed that some females would use black magic and witchcraft and thus should be burnt as a danger to the society. Wasn't witchcraft then a social construct? You can easily see that this was a way to put into line women, especially those that didn't live under the eyes of their husband.

That's were this is going. In a post-truth environment where people are ignorant about the facts, you can make whatever reality, as long as you stay credible to some with an agenda that benefits from the lie. Current tribalism and polarization just enforces this.

There are two things you seem to mix here.

One is bilateral defense agreements, then another is the effectiveness of NATO.

For imminent security concerns a bilateral defense agreements with the US (and others) secure Finland. But that doesn't improve much the security of others.

NATO membership would provide more as NATO membership would bring us far more benefits... and Europe. The Baltic states would be very happy if both Finland and Sweden would be in the alliance. If you have just bilateral agreements, then there is no coordination among the countries that have these agreements with the US. With NATO you have coordination with a multitude of countries, and possibilities for example for operations like NATO countries having a permanent air capability in the Baltics and these little states don't have to buy expensive fighter aircraft, but can concentrate on their ground forces. And I would remind that actually NATO's article number 1 is also very important... as this is Europe.

The US is already facing this problem in South East Asia with the absence of SEATO: yes, the US has agreements with Japan, the Phillipines, Australia (with AUKUS), but these countries have no coordination among each other.

So for all practical purposes, Finland is in NATO now. Does that feel like a big shift in Finland's long term strategies to you? — frank

Yes.

February 24th 2022 was a huge change for Finland (and Sweden). Only a minority of Finns had wanted to join NATO beforehand, but now instantly it became a huge majority.

Basically Finlandization finally came to an end, the idea that we can manage both to have good relations with the West and with Russia. This change naturally started to change when the Soviet Union collapsed and Finland joined the European Union. Then neutrality changed (as Russia is basically hostile towards the EU). It wasn't the Russo-Georgian war, the annexation of Crimea, but this all-out attack on Ukraine that finally broke the camels back. Joining NATO was quite unanimous, now 184 against 7 votes in the Parliament passing the law to join NATO, which is far bigger majority than when Finland joined the EU.

Now the relations with Russia are as cold as they were... I guess in the 1930's. Finnish Prime minister Sanna Marin (a social democrat) and the Estonian president have been referred in Russian media to be "female nazi concentration camp guards". So that's where the relations are with Russia. All time low.

Personally I started to see the change a few years ago when as a reservist the local the sotilaskoti (cafeteria for soldiers) at the military base was filled with British troops eating pizza. Seeing foreign troops in a Finnish military base hadn't happened for a long time. Now the reservists and the conscripts have trained in mixed teams with the US marines. It's a big shift.

The truth is that both Finland and Sweden would have been happy to stay outside NATO and have membership just as an "option", hence trying to have good relations with Russia. But those mean little to Putin, so enough was enough.

Yeah, funny that. It's almost as if it doesn't really matter what the other countries think. — Isaac

Oh but it does.

Which just shows that NATO is an international organization where the opinions of the member states do matter, hence the idea that NATO is just a pawn for the US and it can rule through whatever it wants is a false idea (which has been promoted even on this thread by some).

Same thing with EU, getting all the sovereign countries to get behind something isn't an easy thing to do.

Are Finland and Sweden going to make it into NATO or not? — frank

Hungary and Turkey will milk what they can get from it, but I'm not worried.

Besides, for this time, when the countries have made the application for NATO, accepted by all but two member countries and hence yet aren't full members of NATO, the US, the UK and for example Poland have already given bilateral security guarantees. When you have already bilateral security guarantees from the US and UK (and other NATO member states), I wouldn't be worried about it.

In fact Hungary has come out saying that it won't accept Ukraine to the EU either.

If only that were true. :broken: — praxis

I agree, and that's why we ought treat humans better.

I pointed out that both apple and canine varieties (also “false taxonomies”) are also influenced by human social, cultural, and perhaps even political factors. In fact, they wouldn’t exist at all without the influence of humanity and its culture. — praxis

Taxonomies are good if you can answer some specific questions with using them. Otherwise they aren't so important.

And other animals have affected other species and the environment too. Besides, if it wasn't for one freaking asteroid, dinosaurs would likely roam here and humans wouldn't have inherited this planet (if perhaps not even evolved).

The philosophical problem is that as we are intelligent animals, we can harness our environment and other species to lengths that hasn't happened earlier on this planet, however when we are animals, we are part of the environment too. So, why the difference between us and the biosphere, when we don't make such with other animals?

Would you compare human races to dog breeds? — NOS4A2

Dog breeds are also cultivated by humans. — praxis

Comparing humans to animals is a very slippery slope as we don't treat humans as we do animals, even if many think (as I do) that humans are just intelligent animals.

If European leaders are incapable of serving European interests, Europeans better be outside NATO. Feeling better now? — neomac

:up:

Seems like (to some here) Europeans are just spineless lackeys and pawns, who should stand up against the system they themselves have been part of creating and now depend on. Bad Europeans, bad!

FYI, how things are done in Moscow, reported by different sources, Yevgeny Prigozhin complains about his mercs not getting enough ammo from the Russian army to kill Ukrainians: — jorndoe

I remember reading that actually in Russia there's no legal stature for PMC's like Wagner to exist in Russia, which fits quite well to the dictators gameplay: even the existence of these groups is totally dependent on Putin.

And the division of Russian forces to the Armed Forces and the National Guard, and then to private armies like the Wagner group, is purely done to strengthen Putin's power by not centralizing the military power into a central command. Similar tactics have been (and are) played around with dictatorships, most well known example perhaps Hitler's Third Reich having the Wehrmacht and the SS, even with Göring's Luftwaffe having their own ground troops, even panzer divisions.

The obvious result is shown here happening in Russia, with Wagner and the military obviously being in bad terms with each other. Of course the good thing is that this division purely done by Putin's efforts to control everything helps the Ukrainians. It helped last year with the Ukrainian counterattack which focused on a section of the front manned by National Guard units, which weren't as heavily armed as army units (as their mission is to beat demonstators and hunt lightly armed insurgents.

Similarly Ramzan Kadyrov, the president of the Chechen republic and his Chechen, aren't in any way a political threat to Putin's power. But as both Wagner and Kadyrov's Chechen are needed, they can bitch about how things really are.

And as Putin as dictator basically think about himself, this kind of system of various actors and players can create a real shit show in Russia as Putin cannot live forever. (Even if the country has seen false-Dimitry's, likely we won't see false Putins. At least it's unlikely.)

It’s well-known that urban settlements and the division of labour led to increasing stratification. — Jamal

Stratification comes also by the free market system, where supply and demand determine price and thus the income of people. And we accept this because this usually goes along the lines of a meritocratic society: if you have quite rare abilities and knowledge for which there is a demand for, you get a higher income for your work. If on the other hand you can only do something that nearly everybody can do with little training, then likely the compensation for that work will be meager. If there is a shortage of labour, then the price of that labour has to go up, which then also affects just where people choose to work. And as we cannot know just what will be needed, we get the needed information from the price mechanism.

. So the transition to a more democratic regime might more easily support separatist movements wherever the relation between ethnic groups is diverging or has been historically tense if not dramatic. — neomac

This is the fear just what both China and Russia have about democracy in a nutshell.

A country with various ethnicities and people is difficult to sustain. But it is possible. One successful way is to create an entity in which all belong. With England it was the creation of the term "British". The Scots and the Welsh are also "British". The Russian Empire didn't have that, but then with the Bolshevik Revolution you did get a common entity of everybody being "Soviet". Yet that Soviet Union, didn't last.

I agree. I’d go further and point out that Stalin was a committed Marxist and not just an opportunist monster as Trotskyists like to imagine. — Jamal

Above all Stalin was also an organizer, who kept the Soviet experiment going. But I don't think his way into power was some kind of accident, it's something that likely would happen sooner or later. When you are committed to revolution and using violence, it's no surprise that a very violent person (or some who use a lot of violence) will end up in charge.

That's why you do need the safety valves of a democracy, a constitution, elements of a justice state and so on.

But that’s all boring, and it doesn’t invalidate Marx’s critique. — Jamal

It's easy to make a critique of how things are. The important issue what you give as an answer.