Building Quote by Ted Rall
“What people don't seem to ever understand is that any infrastructure that exists under your regime, in your current government, will be appropriated and inherited by the next regime. I mean, the KGB came out of the NKVD which came out of the Tsarist version of the same thing. And now, the FSB operates out of the old KGB building in Moscow. The infrastructure remains exactly the same. There's a little bit of reshuffling of personnel, and that's it. The way to make sure that there's no FSB today would have been for the Tsar to not have built an infrastructure for it in the 1800s.”
About This Quote
Institutions and bureaucratic structures tend to outlive the regimes that create them; new governments inherit and repurpose existing frameworks rather than building entirely new ones.
In simple terms: Governments inherit old institutions.
Key Takeaway
State infrastructure is persistent across regimes.
Themes
political history
institutional continuity
power dynamics
bureaucracy
Mood
analytical
critical
Type
historical
political commentary
When to use this quote
- Post‑revolutionary state building
- policy reform
- organizational restructuring
Key Concepts
path dependence
organizational inertia
Practical Applications
- Plan reforms that work within existing structures.
Questions to Reflect On
- What mechanisms allow a new regime to truly transform inherited structures?
- Can continuity be an advantage for stability?
A Different Perspective
Radical change can still occur by dismantling or radically reshaping inherited institutions.
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