© 2008 Eric Margolis

Archives > April 30, 2007

DOSVEYDANYA, BORIS NIKOLAYEVITCH


Boris Nikolayevich Yeltsin’s lavish funeral in Moscow last week leaves one with a sense of sorrow and mixed emotions. Yeltsin certainly deserves a place in history for bringing down the rotten Soviet Union, though his humiliation of its leader, the well-intentioned but hapless Mikhail Gorbachev, was brutal.

Yeltsin almost didn’t survive the 1991 anti-Gorbachev coup. As I learned from KGB sources, the commander of KGB’s elite Alpha Group who had been sent to assassinate Yeltsin refused to order his men to shoot. Yeltsin survived to become Russia’s first elected president and he was hugely popular – for a time

At first, there was widespread optimism that Yeltsin might somehow produce a viable democracy and free markets in this long-suffering nation, so horribly ravaged first by Stalin, then Hitler.

Tragically, Yeltsin failed both counts. Instead of democracy, the new Russia got chaotic politics resembling tribal warfare. The ideal of free markets quickly vanished, as robber barons, gangsters, and former intelligence men – more often than not all in cahoots- pillaged the economy. A tiny elite grew fabulously wealthy while ordinary Russians suffered cruel privation as their pensions vanished and prices for basics of life soared.

Under Yeltsin, much of Russia’s foreign and economic policies fell under American influence. Washington flooded Yeltsin’s Russia with new $100 dollar bills which became, in effect, the nation’s real currency. Russians bitterly complained their nation was under `external management.’

In the late 1980s, I was the first western journalist invited into KGB headquarters at Moscow’s notorious Lubyanka prison. Long hours spent with senior and mid-ranking reformist KGB officers in Moscow allowed me to understand and report back the shape of things to come.

KGB’s elite First Directorate, charged with foreign intelligence, was composed of the cream of Soviet society: young, highly-educated, sophisticated, westernized, multi-lingual officers. The men of the First knew better than anyone, including the sclerotic Communist leadership, that the Soviet Union and Communist Party were totally rotten and nearing collapse.

In 1989-1990, I was advised KGB had decided to abandon the party that it had been created to defend, save itself in the impending national ship wreck, and seize key sectors of government and the economy. As one KGB general told me, `we need a tough dictator like South Korea’s Park Chung-hi or Chile’s Pinochet to make our lazy people work – at gunpoint if necessary.’

After 1991, KGB, nominally split up into FSB(domestic) and SVR(foreign intelligence), went into business. It worked against the Party, and relentlessly undermined Yeltsin’s attempts to produce a viable democratic government while putting `retired’ KGB men in key positions in government and industry. During the Yeltsin years, former KGB men occupied around 47% of senior government posts.

In 1994, the Muslim Caucasian state of Chechnya, with only one million people, declared independence from Russia. Yeltsin reacted savagely, sending in heavy bombers and artillery to shell Grozny, capitol of the tiny nation. Russia’s attempts to crush Chechen freedom left 100,000 Chechen civilians dead and the tiny country destroyed. After more bitter fighting, the fierce Chechen defeated the Russian Army and drove it out.

Yeltsin’s slaughter of 10% of the total Chechen population was one of the worst war crimes of our era. President Bill Clinton actually lauded Yeltsin as `Russia’s Abraham Lincoln’ and helped finance Yeltsin’s brutal war against Chechnya. The Bush Administration would later shamefully brand Chechen independence fighters - the children of Soviet concentration camp survivors - `Islamic terrorists.’

Russia was engulfed by crime and runaway corruption. Surrounded by mediocrities, thieving officials, and his rapacious extended family, Yeltsin steadily lost control in spite of huge secret American cash subsidies. He ordered the Russian parliament building shelled by tanks after a group of anti-Yeltsin nationalists barricaded themselves within.

Drinking far too much, and suffering from worsening heart disease, Yeltsin was almost unable to serve his second term. KGB/FSB dirty tricks added to Yeltsin’s growing image as a drunken buffoon. Meanwhile, in a sordid scene reminiscent of post-World War I Germany, foreign financers and carpetbaggers poured in to join the plunder of Russia’s state assets.

On New Year’s eve, 1999, the `security organs’ ousted Yeltsin in a palace coup. The official version was that Yeltsin had resigned. Former FSB director, Vladimir Putin, became Russia’s new president. Putin was the antithesis of Yeltsin: sober, efficient, decisive and respected.

Putin was boosted into office after 300 Russians were killed in mysterious apartment building bombings in 1999 blamed on Chechen `terrorists.’ In his fascinating book, `Blowing Up Russia,’ former FSB agent Alexander Litvinenko, who was recently murdered by means of a radioactive isotope in London, claimed the bombings were a false flag operation conducted by FSB and gangsters designed to provoke a new war against Chechnya and deliver a mortal blow to Russia’s dying democracy.

By 2007, former KGB and GRU (military intelligence) officers had come to occupy 78% of all senior posts in government and industry.

The predictions I had heard from members of the KGB back in 1988 and 1989 had finally come to pass. President Vladimir Putin, with an approval rating of 70%, had become Russia’s most popular leader, the strongman on a white horse that KGB and most Russians had so long been craving.

The flow of Russian history was back on its traditional course. Like the post-1917 Revolution’s liberal Kerensky government, Boris Yeltsin’s experiment was a curiosity and aberration, the last tainted and unlamented vestiges of which were interred last week with his body.

copyright Eric S. Margolis 2007

WRITER’S NOTEBOOK

3 May

*Half of France 44 million voters watched the TV debate last night in Paris between presidential contenders conservative Nicholas Sarkozy and socialist Segolene Royal. In my view, Sarkozy came out looking more presidential - which he always does. Royal is a nice lady but French want a king, not a soccer mom. Still, many viewers thought the debate a draw. There was no `I knew Charles DeGaulle, Madame Royal, and you're no Charles DeGaulle.' My hunch is that Sarkozy will win. But as noted earlier, I'm not keen on either candidate. France's presidency demands a regal-looking figure. Chirac, with his physical stature and sonorous voice, was perfect. So would have been the dashing, patrician Dominique de Villepin. The leader of France is expected to have style and chic.

*Kudos to the Toronto Globe & Mail newspaper for exposing Canada's involvement of the torture of prisoners captured by Canadian forces in Afghanistan. More about this soon.


2 May 2007

*Turkey's Supreme Court, an arm of the `deep government' that really rules Turkey, just bared its claws and blocked election of that nation's very able Foreign Minister, Abdullah Gul, for being `too Islamist.' This fake court really speaks for the so-called `secular' elite that has ruled Turkey since the 1930's: the army, industrialists and big landowners, moneymen, and the state bureaucracy.
The `secularists' are also trying to prevent parliament from changing election of the powerful president from appointment to a popular vote, and reducing his term from seven to five years.
The ruling AK party, led by PM Recep Erdowan, is now calling for a national election. The army brass are threatening the fifth coup since WWII. Keep watching. Turkey could blow wide open. It badly needs a major revolution to once and for all get rid of the lingering influences of 1930's state fascism.

*All the world wonders if Rupert Murdoch will succeed in buying Dow Jones & Company. One thing is for sure: the Wall Street Journal's editorials and slanted news can't go any further to the extreme right. So even if Godzilla Murdoch manages to buy the influential ideological paper - the Pravda of Republican businessmen - its editorial policies will likely remain the same. Murdoch's growing empire, which includes the Times of London, the New York Post, much of the Aussie media, and Fox news has become the Ministry of Truth of the hard right.

*Got to hand it to the Israelis. When it comes to truth-finding commissions, they don't fool around. This week, the Winograd Commission blasted PM Ehud Olmert and Defense Minister Peretz for totally bungling last year's disastrous war in Lebanon. The commission all but called it an outright defeat. Olmert, Peretz, and former chief of Staff Halutz ended up looking like the Three Stooges, Olmert's party rival, former senior Mossad official Tzipi Livni, a favorite of the Bush Administration, lost no time in calling for his head and selflessly offering herself as the new party leader. I wish we could see similar red-blooded investigations in Washington instead of the shameful whitewashes we've so far seen over 9/11, Iraq, Abu Ghraib and torture. Time for glasnost and perestroika in George Bush's Washington. .

***

April 30 2007

**Watching former CIA Director George Tenet bluster his way through an interview last night on the CBS show `60 Minutes’ left me queasy and angry. CIA officers have long complained Tenet was a yes-man and sycophant, always ready to kiss the hand of whoever was in power.

Tenet played a major role in facilitating George Bush and Dick Cheney’s naked aggression against Iraq and misleading Americans into war. Tenet now stands to profit from a $4 million book advance for his self-serving memories. Disgusting. This revenue should go to help wounded GI’s. A group of former CIA officers rightly blasted
Tenet as `the Alberto Gonzalez of the intelligence community.’ It’s hard to think of a worse insult. Gonzalez, who has long played Sancho Panza to George Bush, wrote the administration’s legal briefs justifying and permitting torture.

*Fascinating events afoot in Turkey. What’s known as the `secular establishment’ is desperately trying to block the highly respected current moderate Islamist foreign minister, Abdullah Gul, from being elected president. A powerful combination of government bureaucrats, western-oriented city dwellers, and Turkey’s `deep government,’ the army and security forces, are trying to undermine the moderate, pro-European Gul. At the heart of this increasingly dangerous confrontation, marked by brazen threats of a coup by rightwing army generals, is fear that if Gul becomes president, he will purge the army of its quasi-fascist, anti-Islamic generals and threaten the economic power of the industrial monopolists who back them. This is not about headscarves for women: its about raw power and big money.

*Last year, this column warned that if Canada got more deeply involved in Afghanistan its troops would end up being brutalized and increasingly involved in human rights violations. This, alas, has come to pass. The ignorant politicians and blowhard generals who led Canada into the Afghan morass have just `discovered’ that prisoners captured by Canadian troops are being handed over to the Afghan government’s brutal secret police, a leftover from the Communist days, for horrible tortures and abuse. Canada’s hands are now as dirty as the Communist-backed regime in Kabul that it foolishly supports. Good work, Conservatives.

*High drama in France. Conservative Sarkozy is about 5% ahead of Socialist Royal in the polls. But how will the former supporters of the moderate Francois Bayrou vote? That will decide the election. Supporters of far right, Vichyite Jean-Marie Le Pen are all going to Sarkozy. Too bad Bayrou can’t replace Royale.

French rightly voters feel they are faced with two poor choices. My solution: I offer myself as candidate for President de la Republique! My platform is simple: 1. government subsidized two-hour lunches with wine for everyone. 2. The guillotine for anyone who bakes the kind of fake, industrial baguettes increasingly found in France made from frozen dough that are a crime against humanity. 3. Tax deductibility of mistresses. 4. Five years in prison for tailgaters and speed freaks, rude waiters, surly car rental personnel, and officious bureaucrats. 6. A ban on fat foreign tourists in shorts from central Paris. 7. A return to smoking everywhere, particularly restaurants and cafes. 8. Sending all strikers to Devil’s Island. 9. Invading Belgium. 10. Rearming and modernizing the Maginot Line forts.
Voila! I await the republic’s call. Vive la France.

***



Posted by Eric Margolis on April 30, 2007 11:39 AM
Comments:

How about reinacting the ‘Treaty of Versailles’ every Thursday - followed an elaborate German march down the ‘Avenue des Champs-Elysées’?

I am pretty sure you have guessed by now that I don’t like La France very much.
————————-

I wonder why people in Europe are not jumping up and down at this obvious anti-democratic marches that are taking place in Istanbul which call for enforcement of their view on to others?
—————

I have a question for Mr. Margolis, is Russia a part of the West - or Europe for that matter?

Posted by John Edward at April 30, 2007 12:40 PM

I find Russia fascinating. When I first became a fan of Eric’s back in the 1980’s it was his stories of Russia that get me hooked. Though the current mess in Russia is not so intriguing.

My father went to work in Irkutsk, Siberia in 1993. He was a project manager for a Canadian construction company that supplied and installed pre-manufactured industrial buildings. The buildings were built and disassembled in Canada, put in containers and shipped worldwide, then reassembled on site.

The pictures and stories my father brought back were mind-boggling. One photo is of a mobile truck-mounted crane with a load swinging at an odd angle and men standing around. The crane operator came to work drunk and got in an argument with the supervisor. So he got in the crane, set it rotating, and slept all day. The swinging load ensured he wouldn’t be disturbed.

My favorite story is of the weekend the workers all went for a picnic to Lake Baikal. The Canadians wanted to barbeque some meat, real meat. One of the locals spoke English and said “My brother raises sheep. You want fresh sheep meat?” The Canadians accepted.

The next day the whole crew is one the beach, playing Frisbee and waiting for the barbeque to begin. Then the guy showed up with the sheep, walking beside him on a leash. The Canucks didn’t have the heart, or stomach, to slaughter the sheep and barbeque it. So they tried to teach it Frisbee instead. Great pictures, although the sheep was lousy at Frisbee.

DCanuck

Posted by D. Canuck at April 30, 2007 12:48 PM

Russia is in trouble. It has roughly 140 million inhabitants. Some 1-million are infected with HIV – the currently face probably the biggest AIDS crisis outside of Africa. In fact more new HIV infections were registered in Russia during the 2000 calendar year alone than all previous years put together. Just as worrisome is abortion. About 1.6 million women reported having an abortion in 2005, while only about 1.5 million gave birth. And those are just the reported numbers.

Russia is not even close to the required replacement rate. For every 1,000 Russians there are 16 deaths and just 10.6 births, a gap that isn’t being filled by immigrants, leading to a population decline of about 750,000 to 800,000 a year. Russia has a replacement rate of about 1.2 – just a slightly above half of the required replacement rate. Do the math and project out a couple generations. Scary stuff.

As far as Eric’s comments at the end, a genuine LOL at his platform.

Posted by hegadumb at April 30, 2007 01:55 PM

People jump when the media tell them to jump. The media(plus the politicians and special interest groups which pull its string) are not pro/anti democracy. They are pro status quo and use democracy to maintain the status quo when it suits them. The status quo is real power in the hands of a wealthy elite and the West’s political class, which has nothing in common with the average citizen. The job of us, the average citizens, is to work, vote and believe in the superiority of everything western. It is an exercise in self-deception. Democracy being the biggest charade of all.

Posted by Paul Whiteside at April 30, 2007 04:19 PM

>I wonder why people in Europe are not jumping up
>and down at this obvious anti-democratic marches
>that are taking place in Istanbul which call for
>enforcement of their view on to others?

Turks are neither a European nor Western people, and therefore Turkey is not a European country, so why would Europeans care what goes on there?

>For every 1,000 Russians there are 16 deaths and
>just 10.6 births, a gap that isn’t being filled
>by immigrants

Immigrants to Russia? Russia has a large number of nationalities within its borders and has enough problems without importing more.

The last thing European nations need is immigrants from outside of Europe.

Posted by chris at April 30, 2007 05:16 PM

Amen to Paul Whiteside.

Posted by chris at April 30, 2007 05:17 PM

I was watching a 4 hour program last night, on the History of Russia. From the time when the Moskovian’s grabbed land from the Tartar’s, right up to the modern fall of the USSR, there is one common theme rolling over and over.
Russia, with a world changing outside it borders, forces a time of cataclysmic changes. Peter the Great, Russian Revolution, Ivan the Terrible (in no particular order), with great upheavals and society changes, then a long period of stagnation, all the while the outside world continues it march with progress.
I had first thought the end of the Berlin wall, and the fall of the USSR was the time of radical changes, but maybe that was just the preamble to what comes next? To quote Capt. Marko Ramius of the Soviet Union’s newest ballistic missile submarine Red October … “A little revolution every once in a while is good for the soul”

Posted by Poseidon_dude at April 30, 2007 05:44 PM

-“Turks are neither a European nor Western people, and therefore Turkey is not a European country, so why would Europeans care what goes on there?”

I guess someone is packing a lot of poison. I didn’t even bring up any suggestions if or not the Turks are European or Western. To be honest, I couldn’t care less about the old World’s prejudices - as long as they forget about them when they start packing for the ‘colonies’.

The reason I mentioned that is the acute criticism of anyone (anywhere) who does anything slightly un-Western gets the stick from Europe’s media and chattering classes. Of course the fact remains that this is all they can do these days, moan and whine.

Posted by John Edward at April 30, 2007 06:29 PM

To John Edward:

Poison and prejudice? I was making a plain statement of fact. Perhaps you’re overly sensitive.

Though I understand your further point.

Posted by chris at April 30, 2007 07:43 PM

Are the Turks really anybody’s people? They’re not Westerners. They’re not Slavs. They’re not Arabs or Semites. They marched in from Central Asia hundreds of years ago, and they’ve stuck out ever since.

It would be nice if they could convince the Patriarch of Constantinople to stop calling himself the “Ecumenical” Patriarch! Gosh, if they could do that, I’d let ‘em into the EU :P (Would that be a reward or a punishment?)

Posted by CalmHorizons at April 30, 2007 07:54 PM

Chris:

If Russia cannot reverse their demogrphic death spiral somehow, their population will fall from the current 140 million to around 90 million by 2050. It’s the math. If the replacement rate doesn’t get up to a healthy 2.1 or more, it’ll be part of China no later than 2100.

Posted by hegadumb at April 30, 2007 08:23 PM

D. Canuck:

Russia is indeed a very interesting country; it continues to be one really. Irkutsk, where your dad worked, is on the other side of the lake from where I was in Ulan Ude. It’s amazing how the fall of communism has turned fortunes in Russia’s vast Siberian wilderness; there is more space than possibly imaginable, and public works project started in the communist era were just left there, sitting incomplete. Ulan Ude still retains some cosmopolitan flavor (It wasn’t even on maps during the Soviet time), but the area outside the city, all the way to the Eastern shores of Baykal, are dotted with abandoned and decaying industrial works, and entire villages of wooden cabins (Dachas) occupied by two or three families. Amazing…

TIbetan Buddhism, at least, has resurged in the countryside. However, the rise of Moscow as Russia’s economic nerve center has sucked the economic life and talent out of just about every other city in Russia. People in Ulan Ude still resent it, and look back fondly on the communists who subsidized their ordinarily harsh life on the Siberian frontier.

There’s a bust of Lenin’s head over 2 stories tall in the town square, and not a chip, crack, or hint of graffiti in it. This, as the opera house across the street is crumbling to the ground….

Posted by chatman at April 30, 2007 11:29 PM

Hegadumb:

I understand but Russia has enough problems dealing with all the nationalities in its midst let alone import outsiders (save fellow Europeans). The USSR had over 150 nationalities, now that’s complex.

Perhaps if Russians stop aborting themselves they will not disappear as a people.

Good to see some civilized dialogue going on. Had to leave this forum as it was becoming a sh!tpit, but glad to see some reasonable people left.

Posted by chris at April 30, 2007 11:38 PM

I was reading through last nights posting, and was nodding my head with Chris’s statement about the civilized dialogue, when I read the next entry. Scanning back I can see no mention of sexuality, or the fashion industry? What the hell does this have to do with Russia?

Speaking of population changes, I was reading yesterday that the Chinese government estimates that they will have something like 19 million more marriage age men, than women, in the next couple of years. This is a direct effect of the one kid program, and selective abortions so parents can get a son. What will they do with 19 million men with nothing else to do? Hmmmm?

Posted by Poseidon_dude at May 1, 2007 10:17 AM

Hey.. Writer’s Notebook is back!

About Turkey… how much business is the army involved in? For example, over here, we all know and love our “Fauji Cornflakes”.

Anyone know?

Posted by The Questioner at May 1, 2007 10:25 AM

platform item 3. Tax deductability of Mistresses… im almost certain Quebec has had that one on the books forever….

In fact, should you work in a Quebecois controlled office for a month or so in Montreal (as a friend did years ago), you will be casually informed of who is married to who, and much interestingly, who is doing who… all of which are the same people!?!?! ;)

So, no wonder they’re in good shape, forget claims of diet… who has time to eat with such an exhausting lifestyle …

Posted by bigsugar999 at May 1, 2007 10:38 AM

—-Tenet now stands to profit from a $4 million book advance for his self-serving memories. Disgusting. —-

http://politics.slate.msn.com/id/2165269/nav/tap1/

(a loser’s history)

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2007/04/30/AR2007043001731_pf.html

(ex-CIA critics)

So he got $4 million advance? Mushi got only $1 million for his book. Maybe I should also write a book…

Posted by The Questioner at May 1, 2007 02:56 PM

Chris,

There is a slight misunderstanding. I was not refering to your comment, but of one that was after yours, that seems to be magically removed. There was a comment regarding gay men and fashion. I agree, the forum was getting stupid, but seems to be getting back on track again

D.Canuck, I liked the conversation you got going on there. I sense a best sript Tony in your future.

Posted by Poseidon_dude at May 1, 2007 03:54 PM

LOL D. Canuck!

Posted by hegadumb at May 1, 2007 04:00 PM

The chess player Gary Kasparov seemingly wishes to engage Mr. Putin in a friendly game of chess about Russian politics.

I wonder if what he understands to be a chess game is really a game of Russian roulette.

When he pulls the trigger next to his temple all chambers will be full and alas Mr. Kasparov will finally be checkmated.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/europe/6554989.stm

Posted by oldfan at May 1, 2007 04:07 PM

Gwynne Dyer’s take on Yeltsin…

http://www.gwynnedyer.net/articles/Gwynne%20Dyer%20article_%20%20Yeltsin.txt

Posted by D. Canuck at May 1, 2007 06:27 PM

Anyone see that DVD of Kasparov playing against IBM’s Big Blue? Kasparov came off as a huffy, humorless egotist. It wasn’t pretty.

DCanuck

Posted by D. Canuck at May 1, 2007 07:04 PM

Could you go easy on the letter K?

Please?

Posted by The Questioner at May 2, 2007 10:45 AM

I think he was poking fun at your boyfriend’s posts.

Posted by Tovy at May 2, 2007 10:52 AM

My.. aren’t we in a bad mood Tovy? “Your boyfriend”? LOL. I know he is being funny, but he is overdoing it and my head was spinning.

Comment responsibly please.

Do you have anything to say about this week’s article or will you keep up your useless “they are taking over the board” line?

BigSugar:

Please elaborate on your point… HOW and WHO. Specific examples? Anything that disturbs Tovy has got me curious.

Posted by The Questioner at May 2, 2007 11:02 AM

Oh… he’s gone.

Just as well.

Posted by The Questioner at May 2, 2007 11:05 AM

Russians had an enormous opportunity to form a truly social democratic state but squandered it for greed. Instead, they built a new country based on the worst elements of an old totalitarian Soviet Union and an unprincipled free-market economy.

Posted by Weary at May 2, 2007 12:56 PM

Paul Whiteside – I am rereading 1984 by Orwell and your post looks and feels like a page from his book. Yep, 1984 came 25 years later.

I grew up in the Cold War era and was amazed to learn in university that Russia was (is) a third world country. To think I bought the hogwash that they were in danger of toppling the mighty USA. The current life expectancy for men is 58.7 years and women 71.8 years. The differential between the sexes is huge and bespeaks violence and self destruction. GDP per head in $US is 4,080. By contrast, in the USA, life expectancy for men and women is 75.2 and 80.6, with GDP per head of $39,430. However, Russia has almost twice as many doctors per 1,000 population as the US – 4.3 vs. 2.5.

Russia is one place I have no interest in visiting and kudos to Eric for visiting when things there were in greatest turmoil.

Posted by shazam at May 2, 2007 02:31 PM

I’ll be comment-responsible if you are.
I don’t like you, and so I don’t mind taking the time to say that.

On topic, any hope that Russia had of becoming anything but a corrupt dictatorship died with the election of Putin. Poor Yeltsin was too weak towards the end of his political career to change the direction that his country was headed in.

Posted by Tovy at May 2, 2007 02:51 PM

thanks 2 whoever for saving me from my off topic rant. ex has been driving me nuts.

Anyhow, that Royal, is seriously hot. Boris
should have been hitting the gym a bit more,
and gotten a babe like her to run the show.
femanazi or not. yeah baby! they should be
playing her videos in slow motion to music.

Posted by bigsugar999 at May 2, 2007 03:50 PM

Shazam:

” grew up in the Cold War era and was amazed to learn in university that Russia was (is) a third world country. To think I bought the hogwash that they were in danger of toppling the mighty USA.”

Let’s not be TOO revisionist. The USSR was a force to be reckoned with militarily, even if it was rotting from the inside. These are the same people that faced down the Wehrmacht and won, albeit with horrific casualties. At the height of Soviet power, they had a true deep-water navy with nuclear delivery capability, a gigantic air force that included monsters like the Tu-160 “Blackjack,” which could deliver nuclear payloads into the U.S without ever getting near its airspace, extremely capable fighter aircraft, and over 25,000 armored vehicles with plenty of troops to man them. To top it all off, they had the nuclear delivery triad, with over 10,000 deployable warheads that could overcome just about any sham “missile defense” system.

Russia’s problem was that all of its economic development was funneled into maintenance of their massive military, and the fact that their economy was totally closed. But that doesn’t mean that they did not represent a valid threat to American power. The USSR was not Iraq, and most scholars and war gamers of the day, and even today, could forecast the Warsaw pact’s ability to overrun Europe completely had that war ever taken place. We should be thankful it did not.

That said, it saddens me that you’ll never visit Russia. It’s a fascinating country, though after having visited myself, I can’t say I’d ever want to live there.

Arka C.

Posted by chatman at May 2, 2007 06:43 PM

The Ecumenical Patriarch of Constantinople deserves his (full) title at least as much as the bishop of Rome deserves the title “Pope”.

And speaking of anachronistically outlasting one’s usefulness, Yeltsin died at least 15 years too late. We should never forget that this great democrat (i.e. American stooge) shelled his own parliament, and sold out his own country—far worse than making war against Chechen terrorist-barbarians.

Posted by hyperbolus at May 2, 2007 10:53 PM

Tovy:

—-I’ll be comment-responsible——

We shall see.

—-I don’t like you—-

It is quite a compliment for a pathan when a Yahoodi sez “I don’t like you”. LOL.

On Topic:

Yeltsin had his hand nearly blown off (two fingers missing?) when he was a kid and was playing with a stolen hand-grenade.

That seemed to set a tone for the rest of his life… playing with live grenades.

—-He ordered the Russian parliament building shelled by tanks after a group of anti-Yeltsin nationalists barricaded themselves within.——

The chief among them was Alexander Rutskoi (spelling?). He was a true hero, a patriot of his country.

He flew a Mig-25 (I think) into Pakistan during the Afghan war. Our rules of engagement were to shoot only if the wreckage would fall inside Pakistan. We shot… but the Mig had enormous speed and it blew up over Afghanistan.

Rutskoi was captured by the Afghans who were going to administer the standard punishment (cut off penis, sew it to your mouth and blow you up with a RPG) when we got to him and had him released. He had our respect and we had his.

I can’t help thinking, if Rutskoi had become President of Russia, how different things might have been. People who have been tortured and who have been under fire, are a cut above the rest of us.

Posted by The Questioner at May 3, 2007 01:34 AM

Dear the Agitator -
Thank you for your unkind words.

I won’t let you turn me into a racist, however. I’m glad you admit your hatred of jews - hate leads to anger, and anger is the path to the dark side, and what goes around comes around, so I shan’t lift a finger.

I still refuse to paint all muslims or pakistani people with the same brush as I paint you. There are obviously open minded muslims, and I guess we just need to attract a few to this board to knock you down a peg.

Tovy

Posted by Tovy at May 3, 2007 11:55 AM

Speaking of Yeltsin; my father’s doctor was Yeltsin’s personal doctor up to the time he took over Russia. The doctor had to leave the country as some people around Yeltsin began disappearing. Perhaps Yeltsin was dropping baggage that might prove to be a hindrance later.

Posted by chris at May 3, 2007 04:35 PM

Chris:

I remember an article (I think it was Newsweek) in which it was said that whatever Yeltsin orders in the morning… gets undone by night. “There is a dark force operating inside the Kremlin..” I thought wow, they still have some spine left? (this was before the world knew of Putin).

Now we know that “dark force” that untied Yeltsin’s shoelaces every night, was none other than Putin.

What you mentioned was probably Putin cutting off Yeltsin’s roots from under him.

Your Doc did well to escape.

Btw, I miss the old Soviet Union. The spy novel/movie went to hell after they went away.

Posted by The Questioner at May 4, 2007 01:04 AM

Bush and Bin Laden serve the same MASTERS.

Posted by Rabinovitz at May 23, 2007 09:06 AM

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