Why the “partially mobilised” do not revolt

The liberal A.Vitukhnovskaya, discussing the reasons for the obedience of mobilised Russians, wrote in Telegram that she could not imagine a mobilised millionaire. With this feat she surpassed even Marie Antoinette with her cakes, but the question is not idle. Why don’t the mobilised revolt? Why do they allow themselves to be treated like cattle, from being kept in cowsheds to being sent to slaughter?

Why don’t slaves revolt?

There are five factors that prevent slaves (and the “partially mobilised” in this case could very well be considered as slaves) from revolting.

1. Slaves are weaker than their masters. That is why the latter were able to enslave them. This, by the way, was how the Romans justified slavery: anyone who could not defeat them, or even die in a battle with dignity, was not worthy of freedom.

2. Slaves were bound to society only through their masters. A free man may be a member of his family, a citizen of a town or state, a churchgoer, may have military or civil rank. A slave, on the other hand, is only a slave of his master, even to other slaves. Without his master, he is nothing.

3. Slaves have no common, uniting culture except for the culture of their masters, within the framework of which they, slaves, must be slaves and obey their masters.

4. Slaves have no alternative that they can impose on their masters. “Outlawing all masters” is not an alternative — here the masters will simply have to fight to the last man.

5. There are more slaves than slave masters, but fewer than all free people who believe that slaves should be slaves. Thus, the majority of Southern Americans were white poor people who had no money to buy even one slave, but who despised all non-whites to the core of their Southern soul.

And why do they revolt after all?

For a rebellion to begin after all, at least two factors must fail. The rebellious Roman gladiators were, firstly, as tough as the Romans, having undergone a brutal natural selection in the arena (and often — even before it — had not simply become gladiators) and, secondly, were divided into detachments (Samnites, Thracians, Myrmilons, Retarians, etc.). For the rebellion to win — at least three. The Negro slaves in Haiti had developed both their culture and their social structure over several generations, and they were if not an overwhelming, then at least a fair majority.

I cannot explain the above pattern, I simply deduce it empirically from the experience of such successful and unsuccessful rebellions.

“Partially mobilised”.

The Russian “partially mobilized” have all five factors in place, except for the fourth. And even with it there is a problem, no one or almost no one from the mobilised demands neither an end to the war, nor at least cancellation of mobilisation (and what else could they demand?). However, this does not mean that they do not allow such a demand or have no idea of its possibility, rather than simply keep it in their heads for the time being and do not dare to put it forward. But with the other factors, there is no doubt. They clearly feel less cool than those who have made them go to the draft (except, perhaps, the ideological imperialists or the very fools who are so sure of their coolness that they still expect, once at the front, to take Kiev in three days). They are not connected in any way, most of the time they don’t even know each other. They have no shared culture other than the official one, according to which they are supposed to shed their own and others’ blood for the interests of Putin and Co. Finally, at each point, although there are more of them than there are direct guards, there are fewer of them than all sorts of Pharaohs, Rosgvardians and other security forces, officials, and indeed anyone else who, in the event of a riot, would turn against them.

Sometimes there are exceptions to this rule. For example, a group of mobilized citizens of Tajikistan, united by citizenship (and possibly origin) and religion, from which point of view this war is not their war (denial of the second and third factors). Or Ruslan Zinin, who apparently turned out to be cooler than the military commissar and was able to put forward a simple and intelligible programme: “Everyone will go home” (and who, incidentally, has not yet been mobilized himself).

These exceptions not only give rise to unexpected “excesses” for the authorities, but speak of the possibility of changing the whole equation. But so far these are the exceptions and the rule is the same, as mentioned above. And until that rule is changed, there is no use in counting on mass collective protest or at least mass collective desertion of the mobilized. Only instances of private struggle are possible.