At 13:13 04/01/2011 -0800, Mike Gurstein wrote:
http://www.nytimes.com/2011/01/04/books/04tolstoy.html?_r=1&pagewanted=2&par
This says a lot about contemporary Russia.
M
Yes, I agree. Russia has still not found its feet in the Western world in
which it wants to belong. Peter the Great -- as brilliant a leader as any
in history -- tried valiantly to do so, but didn't quite succeed. Lenin
tried to do so but mistook the form (the heavy industry and electrification
of the West) for the substance (that they were only part of the
industrial-consumer revolution). Stalin was otherwise preoccupied with his
own megalomania and the fight with Germany. And now, today, Putin seems to
be trying to gain respect by smartening up the palaces and ceremonial
soldiery, and also granting some degree of freedom to the Orthodox Church.
But Russia still hasn't broken through to gain the respect of the West. Nor
has it been able to develop a sufficiently wide economic infrastructure.
Apart from its expertise in space and oil/gas technology it's still
wallowing. Apart from the middle-class in about half-dozen cities much of
the rest of the population exists in misery and varying degrees of poverty.
In many regions bartering is still a large part of their economy.
Alcoholism is as great a scourge as it ever was and, more recently, AIDS
and hard drugs are making inroads among the young. Since the fall of
Communism, criminality and corruption are rife. A Russian friend of mine
has had to fly back to Moscow a dozen times in the last few years to fight
with lawyers in the courts over the legal provenance of her mother's
apartment given to her father (a special advisor) personally by Yeltsin
himself when he was President. Russia is still a mess and it will take at
least another generation or two before it has a passably independent
judicial system and adequate laws of property -- the basics of any
civilized society. But by then it might be too late. Russia's population
is already declining and is likely to become largely Chinese at one end and
Polish at the other.
Keith
Keith Hudson, Saltford, England
<http://allisstatus.wordpress.com/2010/12/>http://allisstatus.wordpress.com/2011/01<http://allisstatus.wordpress.com/2010/12/>/
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