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Tsarist Russia
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Tsarist Russia

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Russian Manufacturing Productivity on Par with France'S. (In 1908).
•�March 7, 2021
•�1,000 Words •�85 Comments
Lychakov, N. I., Saprykin, D. L., & Vanteeva, N. (2020). Not Backward: Comparative Labour Productivity In British And Russian Manufacturing, Circa 1908 (WP BRP 199/HUM/2020). National Research University Higher School of Economics. (h/t @devarbol) This recent paper says that the Russian Empire, far from being in a general sense of "economic backwardness", was better viewed... Read More
Stereotype Accuracy, Russian Empire Edition
•�December 13, 2020
•�100 Words •�41 Comments
Scan from pp.156 of the "Russian Calendar" for 1915, a yearly publication from Alexander Suvorin's publishing house that ran from 1872-1917* that has been making the rounds on Runet. Crimes committed /100,000 by ethnicity in late Russian Empire: Theft Admin Crimes Assault State crimes Robbery Murder Commercial Crimes Fraud Poles 25 11 12 2 4... Read More
When Entrance Exams Were Abolished
•�May 22, 2020
•�500 Words •�49 Comments
Less than a year after their coup, the Sovnarkom of the RSFSR abolished university entrance exams on August 2, 1918. The admissions process of 1918/19 was annulled and universities were ordered to open up to everybody, with no tests for subject knowledge or even literacy. Thus came to an end one of the few unmitigated... Read More
Egor Kholmogorov: Russia and the Great War. Victory a Hundred Years Past.
•�November 10, 2019
•�3,900 Words •�539 Comments
Monument to the Heroes of World War I, erected in Victory Park, Moscow in 2014. After a more than a year-long hiatus, caused by certain geographic and occupational changes in his life, the author of these lines would like to resume his translations of Kholmogorov’s work. Remembrance/Veterans’ Day seems like a marvelous occasion to present... Read More
Bolshevik Aristocide: the Fate of Sikorsky's Engineers
•�July 24, 2019
•�800 Words •�169 Comments
Igor Sikorsky was a giant of aviation history. He designed the world's first heavy bomber (Ilya Muromets), the world's first mass produced helicopter (Vought-Sikorsky VS-300), and founded a multi-billion worth aviation company that continues making helicopters to this day. He was also a devout Orthodox Christian and a strong Russian patriot: "My family, which comes... Read More
Sovok Ukraine Topples Suvorov Statue
•�January 26, 2019
•�300 Words •�210 Comments
The reason that I maintain that svidomy are a subset of sovoks is because they don't just topple mass produced monuments to Lenin - they seek to rewrite their entire Russian imperial heritage. For instance, this is what the Maidanists and their Western supporters refer to as "de-Communization". A couple of days ago, the Suvorov... Read More
The Fall of Czarism
•�December 10, 2018
•�96 Comments
Russia's Gun Culture
•�August 3, 2018
•�400 Words •�38 Comments
The Russian Empire, like most European countries, had very liberal gun laws, with no significant restrictions on sales, possession, or open carry. Chelyabinsk gun shop around 1900. After 1905, you needed the permission of the local head of police to buy pistols and revolvers, but this was a very quick affair and granted as a... Read More
The Yaroslavl Rebellion: 16 Days of Freedom
•�July 25, 2018
•�5,000 Words •�336 Comments
Sergey Prokudin-Gorsky (1911): General view of the Church of St. John Chrysostom in Korovniki (from the mill) from the west. It is a curious thing that one of the most important stories of the Russian Civil War doesn't even have an English language entry in Wikipedia. Google results either lead to fleeting mentions in obscure... Read More
Boozing in Late Imperial Russia
•�July 11, 2018
•�600 Words •�23 Comments
Can the Ukrainians really be trusted? Andreev, E. et al (2013) - Comparing alcohol mortality in Tsarist and contemporary Russia: is the current situation historically unique? This is the question that arose on finding that paper. Probably not! Anyhow, AP, you're welcome to this latest nugget of Ukrotriumphalism. Fig. 1. The rate of sudden male... Read More
Egor Kholmogorov: Nicholas II - the Tsar of Normalcy
and •�July 3, 2018
•�3,100 Words •�335 Comments
Nicholas II & family, 1914. Colorized by Olga. As the perfect companion piece to his takedown of Stalin, here’s Egor Kholmogorov's appraisal of Nicholas II, styled an “anti-Stalin”, written during his recent trip to Crimea, which provoked another round of teeth-gnashing among Neo-Stalinists and Sovietophiles. It should also be norws that a recent poll shows... Read More
The Russian Empire: Too Nice for Its Own Good
•�September 26, 2017
•�1,400 Words •�357 Comments
What everyone thinks the Russian Empire was like. "Tsarist Russia was this superstitious land of icons and cockroaches with Cossacks on thot patrol with nagaikas in hand - and it was absolutely horrific!" - Liberals, Marxists. "Tsarist Russia was this superstitious land of icons and cockroaches with Cossacks on thot patrol with nagaikas in hand... Read More
Regional Literacy in Late Tsarist Russia Predicts 21st Century Average IQ
•�February 5, 2016
•�1,800 Words •�112 Comments
Prolific IQ researcher Richard Lynn together with two Russian collaborators have recently published arguing that multiple aspects of socio-economic development - infant mortality, fertility, stature, and literacy-as-a-proxy for intelligence were significantly intercorrelated in late Tsarist Russia. Here is the link to the paper - Regional differences in intelligence, infant mortality, stature and fertility in European... Read More
On Defending the Soviet Union
•�July 12, 2012
•�1,100 Words •�197 Comments
Contrary to what some might try to take from my post on the longterm failure of the Soviet economy, I am not an anti-Soviet ideologue. I loathe lies about its achievements and the blanket condemnations directed its way by moralistic poseurs every bit as much or more than I detest reality-challenged attempts to paint it... Read More
Russian Anti-Semitism, or Just Affirmative Action In Action?
•�June 29, 2012
•�1,200 Words •�14 Comments
While writing this post on Da Russophile about why Russians do not (for the most part) hate Jews - a post that will also be of interest to AKarlin readers - I came across very interesting historical data on literacy and educational accomplishment by ethnic groups in the USSR. Per 100 people of respective nationality... Read More
The Soviet Economy - Charting Failure
•�June 22, 2012
•�1,600 Words •�143 Comments
Many Communists, leftists, and even patriots (I'm sorry to say) have a pronounced tendency to make out the Soviet economy as not quite the resounding failure it really was - or even to paint it as a success story that was only brought down by perestroika and liberal reforms. The above chart - based on... Read More
Prophets of the Great War: Friedrich Engels, Ivan Bloch, and Pyotr Durnovo
•�May 5, 2010
•�3,300 Words •�7 Comments
Though there are plenty of caveats and exceptions, it is safe to generalize that predictions of what the "next war" was going to be like before 1914 were completely inaccurate. The Great War would not be the quick, clean affair typical of the wars of German unification in the 1860's-70's or the sensationalist literature of... Read More
Review of "War and Peace and War" by Peter Turchin
•�April 8, 2010
•�2,500 Words •�21 Comments
Then you might get something like Peter Turchin's War and Peace and War, which I've finally read on the recommendations of Kolya and TG. Ranging from Ermak's subjugation of the Sibir Khanate to the rise of Rome, Turchin makes the case that the rise and fall of empires is reducible to three basic concepts: 1)... Read More
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Anatoly Karlin
About Anatoly Karlin

I am a blogger, thinker, and businessman in the SF Bay Area. I’m originally from Russia, spent many years in Britain, and studied at U.C. Berkeley.

One of my tenets is that ideologies tend to suck. As such, I hesitate about attaching labels to myself. That said, if it’s really necessary, I suppose “liberal-conservative neoreactionary” would be close enough.

Though I consider myself part of the Orthodox Church, my philosophy and spiritual views are more influenced by digital physics, Gnosticism, and Russian cosmism than anything specifically Judeo-Christian.