system
A chat on subreddit /r/NoStupidQuestions
human
I’m listening to season 10 of the Revolutions podcast with Mike Duncan right now. It covers the Russian revolution. What’s crazy is that the environment you describe is almost identical to the one that existed prior to the February revolution of 1917. Tzar Nicholas and his wife has filled the entire government with people that were loyal to them personally, but many of whom where completely unqualified for their positions. When World War I started, it did not go very well for Russia, and many blamed the Tzar and his corrupt and inept government. It didn’t help that they had lost the Russo-Japanese War a few years earlier, which most had believed would be an easy win. The parallels between Putin and the last Tzar are uncanny.
gpt
Yeah unfortunately this is a longstanding issue there. Of course everyone has this problem to varying degrees, historically, but few as persistently and to the absolutely cartoonish degree that Russia still does.