Dear Readers:
Concluding my review of this piece. Sadly, our generation are witnesses to the spectacle of an entire nation literally committing suicide before our very own eyes. Some might call it suicide by cop, or, in this case, suicide by hurling oneself at the Russian army.
If you think I am exaggerating, then just listen to the words of Ukraine’s own Defense Minister, Alexey Reznikov: “Today, Ukraine is addressing that [Russian] threat. We’re carrying out NATO’s mission today, without shedding their [NATO’s] blood. We shed our blood, so we expect them to provide weapons.”
Or the words of Vadim Pristaiko, Ukraine’s Ambassador to the United Kingdom: “The West has a unique chance right now. You won’t find that many nations in the world who would permit themselves to sacrifice so many lives, so much territory, and decades of [economic] development, just for the sake of victory over a sworn enemy.”
Indeed, you would not. How many nations in the world are led by utter bone-heads?
What other nation in history has exhibited such stubborn masochism? It is hard to imagine the sick psychology behind this endeavor. However, yesterday I just happened to watch this episode of The Duran with guest Nicolai Petro. Petro was discussing his recent book, and uttered some rather profound thoughts, in which he compared the Ukraine war to a Greek tragedy. [Antigone comes to mind.] The theme of “Brother versus Brother” has ancient roots, and Petro also compared the struggle to that of Jacob and Esau, in the Bible. Making what I thought was a terrific and inspired comparison, with the concept of “the wrong brother” obtaining the heritage of medieval Rus. In other words, Moscow usurped the glory of Empire that should have gone to Kiev. Combine that slow-burning resentment over the centuries with the virulent toxin of the Galician brand of “Ukrainian” Nationalism, and you get what we see.
Petro made a lot of other great points just in passing: About the multi-cultural, multi-linguistic essence of the “Borderlands”, and how a bustling and prosperous federated empire could have been created from this human diversity. Instead of the fascist mono-culture imposed by Western Ukrainian Banderites (with a lot of help from the Western curators, as Alexander Mercouris had to gently remind his guest).
In this regard I must impose my own thoughts here, before returning to our main topic. Putin and his supporters have portrayed this war, on its ideological plane, as an attempt to rectify “Lenin’s mistake”. The “mistake” being glomming together a mini-Empire (=Ukraine) from these variegated pieces. Pieces that included Russians, Carpathians, Ukrainians, Ruthenians, Hungarians, Greeks, Tatars, and many, many others.
My view: Lenin was a human being, not a God. He made a lot of mistakes, that goes without saying. But this was not one of them. I was happy to hear Petro’s thoughts on this matter (not that he mentioned Lenin), because they confirmed my own hunch that Lenin’s idea of building the Ukraine in this manner (as a multi-cultural, multi-linguistic proletarian-based mini-Empire of its own) was an act of genius. The kind of genius which Putin’s inferior brain (basing itself on a stale bourgeois ideology and a Greater Russian quasi-mono-cultural perspective), cannot comprehend. Therefore Putin thinks to rectify Lenin’s “error” by reincorporating the chunk of Novo-Rossiya back into Muscovy, as the Ukrainians would call it. I mean, I agree that has to be done now, there is no going back now, but that’s only because the bourgeois Yeltsin/Putin regime allowed things to get to this point in the first place.
Suicide By Cop
Okay, enough of the ideological ramblings, let us return to the dry facts of the Zadorozhnaya piece I am reviewing. Where we left off: We saw that the population of the Ukraine is down to something like 20 million souls (best guess), that unemployment is high, the children are not going to school, and the economy is collapsing. What else could possibly go wrong?
Notwithstanding a huge in-pouring of money from the West (which barely keeps the Ukraine afloat), the factories are shutting down, mines are closing, the harvest is poor. Already by last August, Ukraine was officially considered a Third World country, according to all metrics.
Things have gotten so bad, that even the oligarchs, who usually profit and get fat during Hard Times, are losing their wealth. Taking all of Ukrainian capital into account, including that of the oligarchs, the number went down by over $20 billion since the start of the war, according to Forbes.
Meanwhile, the government debt has gone up, and stands at over $100 billion dollars. This is a debt that can never be repaid, thus dooming all future generations of Ukrainians, or citizens of whatever the successor state is deemed to be.
Before autumn, Ukraine’s Gross Domestic Product (GDP) had already gone down by 30-40%, and then Russia started bombing their energy grid, which didn’t help matters at all. Some estimates are that GDP was cut in half, or worse. Russian economist Ivan Lizan believes that a good estimate for Ukrainian GDP currently is $100 billion (compared to $198 billion in 2021).
Lizan: “For the Ukraine, the loss of half her GDP, this is even worse than what happened in 2014-2015. A country without a normal electrical system cannot have a normal economy. Everything depends on electricity, more or less. For example, corn can be harvested from the fields before the first frosts and snow. However, it then needs to be dried, and that’s practically impossible without electricity. For this reason, the harvest of corn fell by 30%, and the harvest in general fell by 40% this year.
“If it weren’t for Western support, Ukraine would have already started to collapse. But NATO manages to keep her afloat. But the goal is not to support development, it’s to stabilize the financial system, they give Ukraine money so that she can continue to fight the war.”
Human Rights activist Larisa Shesler adds: “Currently in the country small businesses and stores are working off of generators. Banks and municipal enterprises continue to function in a limited format. The situation is very complicated, because there is no solution for the electrical shortages.
“Ukraine is losing everything that it took decades to build on its territory. It’s not even possible to imagine how the electrical net and heating stations are going to be rebuilt. It is obvious that neither the U.S. nor Europe has any plans to keep Ukraine as an industrialized nation, this is a nation that used to export prefabricated metallurgical products, electricity from the grid, and even nuclear power stations.
“Their vision for Ukraine is as a military outpost, chock full of military formations fighting against Russia, with preservation of some agricultural lands for the production of cheap sunflower products.
“Recall that Ukraine’s Minister of Finances recently signed a memorandum with the International Monetary Fund (IMF), doubling down on the fiscal austerity measures. Ukraine is not allowed to create social indexes [for welfare subsidies to the population], nor to simplify its tax code; and is required to lay off government employees and reduce their salaries.”
Last word goes back to Ivan Lizan: “My prognosis is that Ukraine will simply dry up and die in 2023, losing much of its territory. In many ways what is happening now is reminiscent of what happened in 2014, only as a mirror-image. Back then, Petro Poroshenko attempted to liquidate the economy of the Donbass. And now Vladimir Zelensky, due to his political errors, is succeeding in liquidating the entire economy of the rest of Ukraine.”


THANK YOU FOR COMING CLEAN ….. YALENSIS … with Your comments on Lenin and Putin one finally can assess where YOU are coming from …. It was NOT a Positive Picture You display in MY opinion … more like a TRAITOR who secures his retreat .. should things go wrong … More like a BACK-STAB when it is needed the least… definitely NOT flattering !
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Oh, boo hoo. Coming clean? Please! My opinions regarding Lenin and Putin are not new at all, I’ve been saying this all along, as my older readers know. Actually, YOU sound more like a traitor to me. Or maybe just an idiot who can’t accept any opinions outside of a certain narrow range.
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Valensis : I have appreciated Your informative and cultured commments on the War in Ukraine … I like Your style ! That said ..it came as a surprise to me to read Your Critique of President Putin… Lenin I dont care about .. as I … like Solzenitsyn .. am a staunch ANTI BOLSCHEVIK and dont like syphilitic powerhungry masssmurdering Jews . But IF you are a patriotic Russian .. You should realize that Critique in the midst of a Battle on Life and Death , which is the situation for Russia … negative critique is unwellcome and counterproductive … covardly and traitorous ..in fact .. in MY Universe . I suggest to You to spend Your obvious intellectual prowesss in the service of strengthening the Defence of Your Country. I can add that I .. as a Dane am highly embarrassed by the current stance of Denmark in the matter … but i also know it is not a genuine danish attitude .. it is just a result of endless Zioanglosaxon brainwashing and bribed danish TRAITORS to the real interests of my Country : Denmark.
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Olav, you lost me at “syphilitic powerhungry masssmurdering Jews”.
Actually, you lost me at “hello”. I don’t like the cut of your jib, if truth be told.
You’re from Denmark? Well, something smells really rotten there. Maybe it’s the fermented fiskefilet. Or maybe it’s just YOU! (haha)
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You talk about Lenin’s mistake but modern Ukraine is more Stalin’s creation. He switched Galicia from Poland to Ukraine in 1945 and added the eastern Donbass to Ukraine in order to have a viable industrial Soviet state. Eastern Donbass and western Galicia had never been together in their whole history. The Ukrainian Chruschev added even Crimea in 1954.
Poland was richly compensated in 1945 by getting instead of relatively poor Galicia industrial Silesia (Wroclaw) and Gdansk from Germany. Stalin punished Hungary and Romania for siding with Nazi Germany by taking away border regions and adding them to Ukraine. Modern Ukraine is the result of this Stalinist creation of an industrial and populous Soviet state balancing the other Soviet states (“divide and rule”) more than the result of Leninist multicultural empire creation.
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Thanks for making those points, Teraspol, it’s all true. I simplified history somewhat due to the fact that Putin ALWAYS criticizes Lenin and blames him for Ukraine, but never (to my knowledge) has said boo about Stalin’s contribution to this rather strange multi-cultural agglomeration that was created. I think there is a reason for Putin’s relative silence about Stalin, but I prefer not to speculate right now.
Anyhow, I wouldn’t necessarily agree with all of Stalin’s magic-marker drawings of borders (and not even with all of Lenin’s, for that matter), and I CERTAINLY don’t agree with what Khrushchev did with Crimea, that was truly bone-headed (I don’t believe it was treasonous, though, just short-sighted). However, I just wanted to make the point that Putin himself is over-simplifying (and in a rather uninspired manner, in my opinion) when he blames Lenin for the current mess.
Lenin (and even Stalin) were actually just trying to do a good job creating viable geographical entities for their time. A lot of mistakes were made; but then nation-building is more of an art than a science. Let’s watch and see how well Putin does at this. I hope he does a good job. But Step #1 is to be humble and admit that one doesn’t have all the answers.
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Lots to think of here – but your Wrong Brother thesis – please don’t bring Harry and William into it, I hear much too much of them here in London.
Suicide by Cop/Superpower is how I have been describing Ukraine for almost a year now. Urged on by US/UK I’m glad to see more commentators drop the whole “need to show Russia is not losing ” thing, Ukraine is in freefall and pointless to waste effort on discussing 2022 when 2023 has begun.
On Lenin/Putin/”What is Ukraine for”. My view has long been that Kiev was a Sartrap or local prince for Moscow/St Petersburg for many centuries. Lands were passed to Kiev for local control on the basis that those lands either were so loyal to Russia or so terrified by Russia that they could be trusted to behave under Kiev.
The moment the Kiev/Moscow axis broke, Kiev could no longer claim suzerainty over the rest of Ukraine. We have Yugoslavia without Tito (died 1980). Plus of course the US determine to make the worst of it all.
And remember that the goal of US has NEVER been to bring down Russia (clearly was never going to happen). And it was never to have the next Poland on Russia’s border that was US friendly and successful (they could have just said keep to the Minsk agreements and wait 20 years – instead they said Fxxx Minsk & keep firing shells at Russian speaking civilians – the civil war continues).
The goal of US has always been mayhem in Ukraine. The EU would happily take the workers. But it harms Russia (especially to the extent it subsidises Ukraine once more), removes a historical Russia ally (see Yugoslavia), prevents the Russian sale of oil and gas to Europe and sticks a great big chasm just where China’s Silk Road should be entering Europe.
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Good analysis, michael. Well, except for the Harry-William thing. I love both of those guys SO MUCH, and I just don’t want to take sides…
🙂
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“And remember that the goal of US has NEVER been to bring down Russia”… really? I don’t think that you are thinking clearly, even Kissinger recently seemed to acknowledge this idea was dominating many people’s heads in Washington. You may well think that Russia was never going to happen but others obviously thought otherwise- just read what they said. Governments have many objectives for following certain policies but I would be surprised if “let’s cause mayhem in Ukraine” is explicitly mentioned near the top of any list. To Yalensis: “Putin’s inferior brain” etc- you can do better than that, and, to be fair, you nearly always do.
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David, agree that a major goal of U.S. foreign policy is to destroy Russia, by hook or by crook. It’s on the list. After that, China, it’s also on the list. America reminds me of some sci-fi story I read a while back, I don’t remember the title or author; or maybe it was an old Star Trek episode, where this giant machine is travelling through space, just mindlessly gobbling up entire planets. That’s the United States of America!
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Anyone half rational has to realise that the US main goal is to slow down its decline so that whoever is in the hot seat right now doesn’t end up as the one taking the blame for it all.
That has been true for at least 10 years. In terms of China vs US, Russia barely counts as a third power. Where it counts is as a method to cut Europe from China.
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That’s a good point. For the U.S. ruling class, it’s all about buying more time before their inevitable economic collapse. Destroy Libya and steal their gold: you just bought yourself about 5 more years. Strip Ukraine: maybe another year or so. It’s like a giant salvage machine. Every nation that is destroyed and looted, buys just a little more time before the company has to declare bankruptcy and go out of business.
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Not quite how I see it. The main “theft” is the easy contracts and kick backs to Washington on the likes of the $2.3 trn spend in Afghanistan. Stealing from Americans.
If getting 1.5% of GDP’s worth of military spend out of 3% actual spend seems criminal, how about spending 20% of GDP on health for poorer outcomes than we get in Europe for 10-12% of GDP. Washington corruption on Health care is on a way bigger scale than the MIC! And looking at health outcomes and the state of poor Americans it is costing America almost as much as MIC is costing Afghanistanis and Ukrainians.
I also don’t see Economic collapse as inevitable. True, a lot of sensible Economic actions would lead to a big drop in published GDP, but not in the Economic situation of all but a 5 or 10% of already rich Americans.
But Chosen. I see US leaders choosing an unnecessary Economic collapse (for US AND Europe) rather than simply acknowledging a multi-polar world where the US could quite simply accept its place as No 2 country to China. It is true that US is psychologically quite unprepared for that (we Brits could give them tips, but they wouldn’t listen).
And it comes down basically to being unable in the US system to admit defeats. That is why half a million Ukrainian soldiers are dead or wounded rather than the US just backing out of Ukraine in Dec 2021. The huge discount rate applied to future shame over current shame (equivalent to massive interest rates on investments) means 2 weeks of embarrassment up front was seen as worse than the whole of 2022/23 in Ukraine.
Afghanistan pull out was delayed for similar reasons, and my guess is that eventually the Pentagon decided to lie to Biden about how difficult it would be because otherwise it would never have happened.
Now as to admitting that China has had the biggest GDP in real money (PPP) since 2015 and has had better relationships with most world countries than US since about 2019 – they are going full denial and bust on that.
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Great points, thanks!
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“the bourgeois Yeltsin/Putin regime allowed things to get to this point”
I think it is not correct to blame Putin for something that was done before he was sponsered by Yeltsin to his present position.
He after all declared the dissolution of the USSR, which was an effort by Yeltsin despite the results of the referendum, as a tragedy.
“basing itself on a stale bourgeois ideology and a Greater Russian quasi-mono-cultural perspective”
Is not Putin but a reflection of the present state of mind of the Russian populace? After all, it is known that this government polls likely more than any other Government before and after actions are taken. And Putin’s approval ratings have never dropped, afaik, below 60%
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It is the old tradition of blaming non-whites and as a matter of business never go against where the money is that is more dangerous now that even a clown like Zelenski can sanction whoever he wants.
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Hm… Well, of course Putin is a rather complex historical figure. In the past I have compared him to Napoleon Bonaparte. Who completed the transition of the French Counter-Revolution and yet remained acceptable to Old Jacobins, while embodying everything about the French nation and culture. (While being somewhat Italian himself).
It’s a fine political artist who can accomplish such magic. Stalin also fits into that category, there are ethnic “Greater Russian Nationalists” who would fall on their knees and worship Djugashvili’s ghost, should he come back to life.
Putin is a great politician of that caliber, that goes without saying. His approval numbers are envied by other world leaders. Having said that, his core supporters fall into several different partitions, some mutually exclusive. For example, those who pine for the Soviet Union support Putin because of his remarks about the dissolution being a tragedy. And straight-out Greater Russian patriots and even Nationalists also support Putin, because he is an ethnic Russian and an Orthodox Believer. But then the Chechens support him too.
Well, the guy is a political unifier, I’ll give him that…
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“It’s a fine political artist who can accomplish such magic. Stalin also fits into that category, there are ethnic “Greater Russian Nationalists” who would fall on their knees and worship Djugashvili’s ghost, should he come back to life.”
You may enjoy the “Boys from Brazil” nonsense as Djugashbili Jnr develops in
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Archangel_(Harris_novel)
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Haha, what nonsense! Okay, here is a better idea for a political thriller: They saved Stalin’s DNA (not so implausible), so they clone him and raise him in an environment where he receives the motherly and fatherly love that every child deserves. And he grows up to be a really nice guy. End of story. (The novel is only 5 pages long.)
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Y,
With all due respect,
I don’t agree with your comments on Putin, nor for similar reasons, with your previous comments on Gorbachev, both men have faced difficulties from orchestrated external events not fatal flaws of character, such disparagement is akin to blaming the peaceful villagers of Helos for the misfortune of being Sparta’s neighbor.
And if they be fools, so too I. Truthfully, few of my generation are not shocked by the senseless savagery put on display by the denizens of DC. I have been a political observer for sixty-some years. Though to my credit, [and my heritage], the mindless cruelty of London is hardly a surprise, indeed the banality of London’s centuries long depravity makes their action vis-à-vis Ukraine barely worthy of a footnote.
All that said; Boris Yeltsin was/is a quisling. His self-aggrandizing personage did not care one wit for the country that raised him up. Boris Yeltsin was very distinct from his predecessor and his successor[s], almost all of the blame lies on Yeltsin’s shoulders alone.
================================
On Lenin & economic matters, no one economic system will suit an empire, small city states perhaps but, empires require an intricate interweaving of systems, in today’s shorthand, a mixed economy. The FDR years 1932-1978 in the US were a successful blend and they were abandoned for what we have now, a titular laissez faire or, as the Roman’s knew it, an oligarchy of the mercantile class with it’s ever attendant public corruption.
The FDR years were not untroubled and yet they weathered storms like a sound ship & seasoned crew. It took a murderous blue-blooded-band of quislings to end that success. When Soviets, those born before you, looked west, it was the success of the FDR policies they admired…not the disaster that is the USA is today under the 3LA’s murderous regime.
We are all creatures of our time on earth…the honest among us, have all been fooled…perfection is not of this earth…well, for honest men, liars achieve perfection without much effort.
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Thanks, S. I am not really thinking “character flaws”, just flawed ideas.
Which we all have.
Thanks for reminding me that we humans are imperfect creatures.
I think that is part of my message. Namely, that Putin should not stand in judgement of Lenin, any more than we should stand in judgement of Putin.
When people are just trying to do a good job, then we should cut them some slack and try to help them just as fellow humans. And we should all be humble, or try to be!
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A nice and relevant comment. I have just reread Putin’s “Beslan speech”, which is already 18 years old. It’s a harsh reminder of what Russia has gone through. I would like to come back in 50 years time and see how things play out. The reference to the Beslan speech came up in an article by Dmitri Trenin, which is worth a read, I think. (The machine translation is not wonderful.)
https://www.kp.ru/daily/27491.5/4702138/
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not much to add that other commentors haven’t said. i especially agree that the “genie was out of the bottle” before putin ever gained power and that lenin’s plans – and i mean ALL of them – may have been well intentioned but, like many ideologies, depended on “ideal conditions”. communism, anarchism, capitalism: all work under “ideal” conditions but those are just that…”ideas”*. so are borders. drawing them on a map and then trying to enforce them is one of the more odious and arrogant parts of colonialism and anyone who thinks otherwise should give a cursory glance toward india and pakistan.
*[note: not an endorsement of marxist materialism AT ALL.]
if lenin had lived to be 200 and stayed in charge the entire time ukraine might be a “new jerusalem” instead of a new baghdad. i do agree with the use of “bourgeois” to criticize putin and those around him who seem to have an ingrained inferiority complex in regards to the west. is there a russian term that matches “uncle tom” or “house negro”? but then i noticed long ago the most virulent and delusional capitalists are ones that emerged from soviet times. ayn rand, anyone?
this article takes a decent stab at that pathology:
https://imetatronink.substack.com/p/ok-doomer?
in any case, good analysis as usual.
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Russia, in general, has had an “…ingrained inferiority complex in regards to the west” for many years–going back several centuries, to be honest. But one thing I’ve noticed–and that has been remarked upon by others–is that the West’s very clear, loudly stated hatred for Russians and Russian Culture and History seems to have, at long last, destroyed that characteristic.
The West-loving Russians all ran and left the country shortly after the SMO began (and any that were left ran once the Mobilization was announced). The remainder watched the EU and US sanction everything and everyone in Russia while making statements about “weakening” and even dividing the country once they conquer it. From what I’ve read recently, West’s strategy of “hubris now, hubris later!” seems to have backfired and Russians now despise the West (generally speaking) and want the war won decisively (and, in many cases, punitively). We’ll see what happens and if Russian attitudes change again over time.
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Thanks, pugbuddy, I agree with your comment. In some ways, horrible as it sounds, this war has been a blessing in disguise, where Russia is concerned. So many issues clarified all at once and made crystal clear even for the apolitical part of the public; a giant litmus test for the intelligentsia. As a bonus, Russia lost, at the snap of a finger, most of her internal Fifth Column without having to apply repressive measures. It’s nice when the rats graciously leave the house of their own accord, without having to set messy traps.
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Thanks for comment, pair. As for “house negro”, there a lot of Russian (and Ukrainian) terms that are analogous, the word “kholop” springs to mind, that would be a serf. But many other terms, such as “lacky”, “boot-kisser”, that sort of thing.
I have a personal thing about not using the term “Uncle Tom”, only because I think it is mis-used (but it’s hopeless to try to change at this point). Having read Stowe’s wonderful novel (several times), and I think the character of Uncle Tom is misunderstood by the public, who use his name as a pejorative. Tom is a character of great dignity, and not a servile character at all, although he sees his Christian duty to love everybody and fulfil his obligations. He understands that slavery is a deeply un-Christian and unjust system, but he does not believe in violent resistance; instead he is always cheerful and carries out his functions without complaint.
At the end, this character is ordered to flog another slave, and he calmly refuses to carry out that order. Tom is willing to work and toil wherever he is told, be it in the house or in the fields, but this is where he draws the line. He refuses to flog the other slave, and as a result he himself is flogged to death by two genuinely evil black slaves who happily perform this function for Simon Legree.
This is why I think it is incorrect to call somebody an “Uncle Tom” with that connotation. However, like I said, it is common practice, and my crusade to fix that meme, is bound to fall on deaf ears. Especially since nobody reads that book any more, and I don’t think it is taught in the schools, although it should be.
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Yalensis: I thought of you (and this thread) immediately when I spotted the following on RT. Lately I wonder if they’re reading your blog for inspiration:
The ghost of Lenin: Why didn’t Russia and Ukraine sort out their border issues when the Soviet Union collapsed in 1991?
https://www.rt.com/russia/569302-russia-could-have-prevented-conflict/
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Thanks for the link, JMF. I doubt if RT reads my obscure blog, probably more like, it’s a topic on everybody’s mind.
Anyhow, the issue of Crimea and Sebastopol definitely should have been worked out at the time. Sebastopol is actually the key, because not even traitor Yeltsin would have allowed it to become a NATO port, if he had any say in the matter. To me, it’s a small miracle that Kaliningrad stayed Russian, at a time when Russia was as weak as a newborn kitten.
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Again, none of this matters to Bankovskaya or its western sponsors, as long as the army continues to fight.
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If they could build a robot army, they definitely would.
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