Anyway, it's my experience that by and large Westerners, for whom Russia has ideologically loomed large for several hundred years, tend to project their own fantasies upon the place rather than dealing with the reality. Just like with the USSR -- it was either the Evil Empire or some kind of incarnation of Marxist heaven. Although it is somewhat puzzling that they still do this when anybody who wants to can get a visa and a ticket and visit the place. Writing "Here Be Monsters" on a map doesn't really work anymore.
--- On Tue, 12/2/08, dredmond at efn.org <dredmond at efn.org> wrote:
> From: dredmond at efn.org <dredmond at efn.org>
> Subject: [lbo-talk] On the Coolness of Russian Bears
> To: lbo-talk at lbo-talk.org
> Date: Tuesday, December 2, 2008, 4:38 PM
> On Tue, December 2, 2008 10:56 am, John E. Norem wrote:
>
> > Tense negotiations over access and rights in a dodgy
> ethical atmosphere.
> > By JOSEPH TARTAKOVSKY
> >
> <http://online.wsj.com/search/search_center.html?KEYWORDS=JOSEPH+TARTAKOV
> > SKY&ARTICLESEARCHQUERY_PARSER=bylineAND>
> >
> > But Mr. Brent never answers his question about
> Stalinism's rebirth. He
> > suggests only that Russia is "poised" in a
> "twilight" between
> > "authoritarianism and freedom." It goes too
> far to speak of Stalinist
> > revival, but one thing is certain: The question of
> Russia is really the
> > question of /how/ authoritarian it will become.
>
> [Cackle]. Why, you can just feel the grey, dour,
> totalitarian menace
> oozing from this nightmarish legacy of Soviet Communism,
> its claws
> threatening to shred the helpless West:
>
> http://www.greatrussiangifts.com/catalog/IMG_0355.jpg
>
> -- DRR
>
> ___________________________________
> http://mailman.lbo-talk.org/mailman/listinfo/lbo-talk
