"Путинский заговор" у Condé: Путин и взрывы жилых домов в 1999

Несколько раз за последние дни видел ссылку на статью, которую Condé Nast пытался не допустить в русское издание не помню чего -- цитирую по Language Hat

Gawker is normally a fluffy, snarky "look at what these bad boys and girls in Washington/New York are up to" site. But when GQ tried to bury Scott Anderson's investigative report at Putin's behest, Gawker crowdsourced a translation:

In an act of publishing cowardice, Condé Nast has gone to extraordinary lengths to prevent Russians from reading a GQ article criticizing Vladimir Putin. As a public service, we're running it here and ask for your help in translating it.
Saturday afternoon update: Just over 24 hours after we asked for your help, you've given us a pretty much complete Russian translation of the story. Thank you to everyone who pitched in.

"Никто не осмелится назвать это тайным заговором" immediately became a hit on the Russian blogosphere. Both repressive governments and greedy, cowardly businesses are finding it ever harder to suppress information.

Честно говоря, я помню эту версию событий, еще когда она выдвигалась по горячим следам. Тогда она казалась мне недостоверной. По двум причинам: во-первых, такая форма "предвыборной агитации" была явно избыточной: за Путина, имея в виду ситуацию в Чечне, проголосовали бы подавляющим большинством и без подобных провокаций. Это можно сравнить с прошлогодней войной в Грузии: грузины, кажется, ничего в России не взрывали, а какой угар патриотизма... Кроме того (и об этом в статье ни слова) были ведь и нападения Басаева на Дагестан, и попытки начать большую кавказскую священную войну с чеченской стороны (другое дело, что эти попытки исходили не от правительства, но от этого никому не было легче, потому что правительство не контролировало ситуацию). Таким образом, поводов начать войну -- и повысить свою популярность -- у Путина было более чем достаточно и без таких провокаций. Во-вторых, и это, по-моему, главное, у тогдашних, да и у теперешних, русских властей не было возможности гарантировать безнаказанность исполнителей такого преступления: оно не имеет срока давности, как это доказывает шум вокруг этого дела, который снова начался через десять лет. Соответственно, исполнители и сбежали бы, вместо того, чтоб исполнять подобный приказ (который, конечно, невозможно было бы отдать в письменной форме). Опять-таки, есть прецедент, о котором говорит сам автор статьи: когда, по словам автора, начальство приказало своим убить Березовского, сразу несколько человек отказалось и созвало пресс-конференцию. Что же было бы, если бы им приказали взорвать дома?

Написавши все, что выше, скажу, что я за самое широкое распространение этого материала, во что и вношу посильный вклад здесь. Во-первых, это служит некоторой защитой тому (или тем), кто еще занимается расследованием (прежде всего, Трепашкину) -- правда, к сожалению, защитой относительной: если его не выгодно убивать Путину и компании, то выгодно Березовскому и компании... Но, все-таки, Путин и спецслужбы -- более реальная угроза. Во-вторых, прошедшие десять лет показали, что Путин и компания вполне способны на многое. Может, и на подобную "предвывборную агитацию"... Другое дело, что, как я думаю, им это было не выгодно и не нужно. Но события последних десяти лет показали, что они, помимо всего прочего, плохо понимают собственную выгоду.

А вот, для сравнения, другая теория заговора -- показывает, что такие теории всегда возможны, даже когда, казалось бы, уже никак...

No word for...

No word for addiction

One reason for the lack of a precise equivalent of "addiction" (passable translations exist -- зависимость, пристрастие, злоупотребление, ...) is that Russian has a device for creating specific addiction-related terms using a "ман" suffix (from "mania"?): наркоман/наркомания, кокаиноман/кокаиномания, токсикоман/токсикомания, etc. -- all meaning addictions to specific substances. A notable exception is alcohol addiction, having a special -- borrowed -- word for it, of course: алкоголик/алкоголизм. It might be that using specific, rather than general, terms for addicts and addictions is somehow a prevalent pattern.

I vaguely remember having been taught that French speakers somehow prefer large time measures (e.g. they would rather say "demi-journée" than "6 heures")... Could it be the same kind of prevalence?

Argument about Haber

... on Language Hat blog

 But scientific/technological invention is precisely the area in which  the "great man" theory is shakiest.

Yes. And the reason, IMHO, is not that there are no great men, it's that the "great" in "great man" makes us to look for something glamorous, while it's oftentimes the blacksmith and his proverbial nail.

Every great advance seems to have been invented by two or more people almost simultaneously. I confess I now nothing about Haber or nitrate fixation, but I'm guessing if he hadn't developed it, someone else would have around the same time.

"Around" is crucial. Those who argue about Haber's contribution being important to the course of European history don't say he was the only one who could do it or that no one would have developed it "around the same time". Indeed, it took the intervention of others and many more years to develop his tabletop reactor into an industrial process. What is being claimed (and I don't have the knowledge to either support or reject the claim in question) is that the discovery, and the Haber-Bosh
industrial process dependent upon it, could have been easily delayed for several crucial years by, say, untimely death of Haber (he used to tinker with noxious agents under high pressure and had sustained some poisonings as a result). In which case the World War would have been seriously affected.

  (Besides, I think the premise is flawed; Russia fought on for a long time with ludicrously inadequate supplies of ammunition, artillery, rifles, boots, you name it.)

One thing I didn't write on Language Hat: the above seems to be a little exaggerated; Russian army had its problems, but so did others, including Germans. Everybody had to ration shells and munitions in the first year of the war; all governments responded with state regulation of production. The Russian "military-industrial committees" actually arrived at making the supply barely adequate by the time the Revolution struck. In any case, absent Haber's process, the Germans would not have had an inadequate supply (that's what they had in the beginning of the war, like everybody else); they would have had no supply at all.

Firtz Haber as the most influential man of XX century

Continuing the discussion on Language Hat blog:

I have seen people seriously argue that the most influential man of the XX century was actually Fritz Haber: absent his "nitrate fixation" chemical process, Germany, not having access to natural nitrates to manufacture ammunition, would have had to sue for peace after Marne and World War I would have ended with all the empires firmly in place. Imagine what that could do to XXth century history: Lenin dies in Switzeland, Hitler is a total unknown.

This, not the "laws of history", is, in my opinion, the main problem with "great men" theory: we just don't know the right "great man".

Again: Great men in history

The discussion of "War and Peace" started by Language Hat made me want to try to participate:

"Interesting thing I have observed over time, as my interests made me witness numerous debates on the "laws of history" is that participants are rarely given to moderation: it's either all chance and "great men", or all "laws of history".

I guess the great philosophical systems of the past centuries have accustomed us to there being a complete non-contradictory answer to all meaningful questions. So the lack of historical significance of the personality of one George W. Bush is taken as evidence of all personalities being relatively unimportant to the course of historical events; if, as this view implies, there were an over-arching theory of historical probability, this would be a valid approach, just like 2x2=4 would be sufficient to prove that 3x2=6. But this is emphatically not the case in history. The historian begins where the natural scientist stops: it's all about the particulars. Every imaginable theory can find its "confirmation" in the huge mass of known facts: you just have to choose the right facts.

There definitely were personalities whose presence or absence was not, as far as we can know, demonstrably important for the course of historical events. There also were historical events that changed the world beyond recognition, and pivoted on presence, absence, and whims of a particular person. For example, not jut the event itself, but the timing and course of World War I defined everything for the history of the next century; even if we agree that _some_ war was inevitable, the timing, and the course of it could well have been different, and depended on personalities in a lot of cases. The personality of Henry VIII is a visible cause in a lot of events that shaped the next two centuries of British history. Yes, it's open to question if Alexandre was really a genius and if his military skill was indeed important in conquering Persia; but without him the Greeks (well, the Macedonians -- some say there were more than enough Greek mercenaries fighting on the Persian side) would not have gone that far in the first place."

Overstating my case, going far beyond my field of competence... Well, that's what blogging seems to be for.