APRIL 2005

    
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From: MSN NicknameEagle_wng  (Original Message)    Sent: 4/26/2005 4:09 AM
April, 25, 2005

The genius of mediocrity

What would Ekaterina Andreeva say if she had Joseph Stalin's case?

The person, who conceals his stature, can hardly be named great.

It is precisely known about Lenin, that he did not conceal his stature: he was small and dynamical, and his internal greatness was shown literally in each his movement.

We also know about Napoleon, that he almost did not conceal his stature because he was very movable.

It is known about Stalin, that he carefully masked his stature. It was done so carefully in all documentary and other films, that many people today do not know, that Stalin was only slightly taller, than Lenin. Actually, he was of the same stature, but they had absolutely different manners to move. Stalin moved slowly, was silent for a long time with a pipe in his hands, ...
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From: MSN NicknameEagle_wng  (Original Message)    Sent: 4/27/2005 4:59 AM
27.04.2005
Back in the USSR

Here’s a peculiar sop to nostalgia: President Vladimir V. Putin of Russia declared yesterday in his annual state-of-the-nation address that the collapse of the Soviet Union was «the greatest geopolitical catastrophe» of the Twentieth Century. Not the rise of National Socialism in Germany, nor of militant imperialism in Japan. No, it was the downfall of a bankrupt system built on coercion, lies and a history of murder; in fact, plenty of former Soviet citizens would argue that the creation of the U.S.S.R. was the century’s most terrible event, but not Mr. Putin.

Now, he didn’t actually justify the Soviet Union, but lamented its end. The year 1991 unleashed a wave of poverty, crime, greed, plunder, separatist warfare and, maybe worst of all, resignation over the seeming impossibility of doing anything about them. No one can argue with that.

In contrast, Mr. Putin now points with satisfaction to a Russia with a robust federal budget, thanks to ...
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From: MSN NicknameEagle_wng  (Original Message)    Sent: 4/28/2005 2:35 AM
April 28, 2005
<NYT_KICKER>OP-ED COLUMNIST </NYT_KICKER><NYT_HEADLINE type=" " version="1.0">
Mourning Mother Russia
    <NYT_LINKS_ONSITE>
</NYT_HEADLINE><NYT_BYLINE type=" " version="1.0">By DAVID BROOKS
 
Vladimir Putin gave a bizarre speech this week in which he described the fall of the Soviet Union as "the greatest geopolitical catastrophe of the century" and said that an "epidemic of collapse has spilled over to Russia itself."

The sad thing is he is half right.

Most of us are grateful for the fall of communism, but the phrase "epidemic of collapse" is not a bad description of what Russian society is suffering through right now. You can measure that collapse most broadly in the country's phenomenal population decline. According to U.N. projections, Russia's population will plummet from about 146 million in 2000 to about 104 million in 2050. Russia will go from being the 6th-most-populous country in the world to being the 17th.

That population decline has a number of causes. The first is the crisis in the Russian family and the decline ...
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From: MSN NicknameEagle_wng  (Original Message)    Sent: 4/28/2005 5:14 AM

Mock Liberalism
By Kirill Rogov
Some people are still under the mistaken impression that President Vladimir Putin's state of the nation address was predominately liberal in tone. If we compare the president's words to what is actually going on in Russia, it becomes clear that he was talking about the end of one phase -- the establishment of bureaucratic capitalism -- and movement to the next phase.

By saying that stabilization had come to an end, Putin confirmed that the regime's political contours had already been drawn. The regional and oligarch elites that once seemed so threatening to the president have been deprived of their political rights and besieged by repressive economic measures. Private property rights have been discarded to a significant extent. The world of politics -- much like the world of the media -- is now fully under the Kremlin's control. The list of acceptable parties has practically been closed and can only be adjusted by the presidential ...
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From: MSN NicknameEagle_wng  (Original Message)    Sent: 4/30/2005 10:15 AM
April, 29, 2005

"The enemy of my enemy is my friend"

Many analysts including Chechen ones, express opinion, that the next Russian-Chechen war was favorable to Putin in the beginning of his career to come to the authority and to become stronger in the Kremlin, but now Putin would like "a pacification of the Caucasus", as he has already built his "vertical of authority" and does not need propaganda use of "the Chechen card" any more. To the question, why Putin in this case does not begin a real political settlement of the Russian-Chechen conflict, in most cases they refer to a certain "mafia", which consists of Moscow financiers, commands of occupational forces in the Chechen Republic and the puppet officials terribly interested in the continuation of the war, bringing them fabulous benefits with larceny of the "regenerative" and "compensatory" money. And this mafia also blocks - "at the level of intentions" - any Putin's peace plans.

Some western and ...
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