Eastern Radar #15
The life and death of Vera Pekhteleva, illegal bitcoin mines in Abkhazia, political economy of the Holodomor, tsarist codebreaking and more
Beeps
🩰 A Swan Lake performance in Bishkek that was supposed to unfold with the participation of two prominent Russian ballet dancers was canceled after a group of local dancers refused to take part because of wage arrears.
⚽ It was surely the longest match of Russia’s football season: the SKA Khabarovsk traveled 9,000 kilometers to Kaliningrad (a 12 hours plane ride), only to lose 1-0 on Sunday against the FK Baltika Kaliningrad and before heading back home.
✍️ The governor of Russia’s Ulyanovsk region is hunting anonymous political Telegram channels who claimed the politician would run for a new term even against Vladimir Putin’s wishes.
🛰️ Curious stripe patterns appeared on satellite images showing the Central Siberian Plateau. What’s going on? NASA’s Earth Observatory provides some (possible) answers.
🎖️ Sputnik Kyrgyzstan has an interesting interview of a Kyrgyz soldier who served in the French Foreign Legion.
📻 And for your podcast needs: Meduza looks at Cold War science-fiction, PONARS Eurasia wonders if Russia’s Communist Party can be more than a “systemic opposition”, and the Oxford Institute for Energy Studies assesses whether Russia’s approach to energy transition could be its “Kodak moment.”
Under the Radar
The Life and Death of Vera Pekhteleva [RU]
Irina Shcherbakova | Holod | March 15
In 2013, Valentina Bisirova, the head of a local singing and dancing studio for children, received a call from the police and was hired to throw a concert for the town’s officers. Her studio used to be a famous KVN team that traveled the country and took prizes. But coal in the Kiselevsk mines began to run out and with it, the sponsors. Nowadays, Birisova hires all children, talented or not.
Vera Pekhteleva was very talented. “I see her on stage and she’s so active, so classy” Bisirova remembers. “And she also has a beautiful voice! Her soul sings on stage, she is very artistic.” Pekhteleva quickly became Bisirova’s favorite student. And when the studio was hired to perform for the police, Pekhteleva, of course, was on stage. “The children sang, Vera sang” Birisova recalls. “I told them [the policemen]: “Thank you, you are doing such a good work, you are protecting us.”” In the pictures, Pekhteleva stands near the police officers and smiles sincerely as the children thank them for their hard and dangerous work.
On January 14, 2020, in Kemerovo, a former boyfriend called Vladislav Kanyus took three and a half hours to kill Vera Pekhteleva, 23 years-old. Neighbors called the police seven times, but no one came.
Abkhazia Posts Videos of Illegal Bitcoin Mines That Are Causing Power Blackouts
Jason Koebler | Vice | March 12
Officials in the tiny, disputed, Black Sea territory of Abkhazia are determined to show their crackdown on rampant mom-and-pop Bitcoin mining operations is serious business. And they’re posting videos of the cops busting DIY Bitcoin mining farms to prove just that, In a region estimated to have more than 1 crypto-mining facility for every 400 residents by its own Economy Ministry. Bitcoin mining has exploded in Abkhazia in recent years due to its exceptionally cheap power rates, Reuters reported. This led to an initial crackdown followed by legalization by the government in September, which pushed more citizens into the business. Winter saw rolling power blackouts in the country as the government noticed an uptick in power use, according to Reuters, which sent the government on the hunt for Bitcoin mines.
Kyrgyzstan: Waiting and loathing on the Chinese border
Danil Usmanov | Eurasianet | March 4
The drive from Osh up to Irkeshtam, at southern Kyrgyzstan’s high-altitude border with western China, began early in the early morning. It was December and freezing. We got stuck for a while at Taldyk Pass. Road workers were out sprinkling sand and clearing snow. By lucky chance, Prime Minister Artyom Novikov happened to be visiting around that time. “It’s only because of Novikov that they’re doing this. Usually, nobody clears it. They only do it when the road gets blocked,” my driver complained. With the pandemic, border procedures have become far more complicated. Initially, after the lockdowns, it took Chinese officials 20 minutes to send a vehicle through. Now, between disinfection procedures and the collection of samples for analysis, it is more like 90 minutes. For that whole time, drivers are blocked inside their trucks. Many take a plastic bottle with them in case they need to go to the bathroom.
Research & General Nerdistry
Some random nerdy stuff: r/AskHistorians has a fascinating answer about the politics of building the Moscow metro, and the Journal of Power Institutions in Post-Soviet Societies has this very unusual database of propaganda posters telling Soviet soldiers how to behave in Afghanistan (translation are included).
The Political Economy of Famine: The Ukrainian Famine of 1933 🔒
Natalya Naumenko | The Journal of Economic History | March 2021
The 1933 Ukrainian famine killed as many as 2.6 million people out of a population of 32 million. Historians offer three main explanations: weather, economic policies, genocide. This paper documents that (1) available data do not support weather as the main explanation: 1931 and 1932 weather predicts harvest roughly equal to the 1924–1929 average; weather explains up to 8.1 percent of excess deaths. (2) Policies (collectivization of agriculture and the lack of favored industries) significantly increased famine mortality; collectivization explains up to 52 percent of excess deaths. (3) There is some evidence that ethnic Ukrainians and Germans were discriminated against.
Electoral Manipulation and Regime Support: Survey Evidence from Russia 🔓
Ora John Reuter, David Szakonyi | World Politics | March 2021
Does electoral fraud stabilize authoritarian rule or undermine it? The answer to this question rests in part on how voters evaluate regime candidates who engage in fraud. Using a survey experiment conducted after the 2016 elections in Russia, the authors find that voters withdraw their support from ruling party candidates who commit electoral fraud. This effect is especially large among strong supporters of the regime. Core regime supporters are more likely to have ex ante beliefs that elections are free and fair. Revealing that fraud has occurred significantly reduces their propensity to support the regime. The authors’ findings illustrate that fraud is costly for autocrats not just because it may ignite protest, but also because it can undermine the regime’s core base of electoral support. Because many of its strongest supporters expect free and fair elections, the regime has strong incentives to conceal or otherwise limit its use of electoral fraud.
Tsarist Codebreaking: Some Background and Some Examples 🔓
David Schimmelpenninck | Cryptologia | October 1998
The final straw came on February 13, 1894, when Aziz Bey, the Turkish military attaché in Saint Petersburg, came back more than tipsy from an imperial ball and awoke the Turkish ambassador himself. This wasn't the first time the Ottoman officer proved an embarrassment: Bey was ordered to pack his bags and return to Constantinople. But etiquette required that he, first, pay his respects to the tsar. This was a standard convention that Alexander III usually adhered to. Yet, this time, he refused to see the Turk — the tsar had little tolerance for those who misbehaved. Count Vladimir Lamsdorff, a senior official at the Russian Foreign Ministry, was horrified. It wasn't just his sovereign's breach of protocol that disturbed him. The count worried that the Turkish embassy would wonder how the tsar found out about Bey's indiscretion.
Lamsdroff himself was well aware of how the tsar knew. For among the dispatches and cables of Russia's own diplomats and the memoranda of the foreign ministry that he regularly submitted to the imperial palace were decryptions of the correspondence of virtually every government accredited to the court in Saint Petersburg. One of the wires Alexander had read was a communication to Constantinople that reported on the Turkish attaché's misbehavior. There was no other way the tsar could have been informed that Aziz Bey was in disgrace.