>--- Doug Henwood <dhenwood at panix.com> wrote:
>
>
>>That's not fair. He can be really erudite and
>>thoughtful too. But he
>>is a pompous dude, no doubt about it.
>>
>>
>>
>
>Like many pompous people, he is led to comment on
>subjects about which he knows nothing and try to pass
>it off as wisdom.
>
[snip]
Just for the record, he reads Russian, visited Moscow not long ago, has written a history of Russian absolutism (in "Lineages") and his personal mentor as a historian was Isaac Deutscher, who certainly knew a thing or two about Russia. So he's not completely ignorant of the place.
I'm not defending his claim about the Duma law, though.
Seth