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Samizdata, derived from Samizdat /n. - a system of clandestine publication of banned literature in the USSR [Russ.,= self-publishing house]
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When geopolitical ‘realists’ do not seem all that realistic…
He is even a bit of a joke by his own metrics.
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Who Are We? The Samizdata people are a bunch of sinister and heavily armed globalist illuminati who seek to infect the entire world with the values of personal liberty and several property. Amongst our many crimes is a sense of humour and the intermittent use of British spelling.
We are also a varied group made up of social individualists, classical liberals, whigs, libertarians, extropians, futurists, ‘Porcupines’, Karl Popper fetishists, recovering neo-conservatives, crazed Ayn Rand worshipers, over-caffeinated Virginia Postrel devotees, witty Frédéric Bastiat wannabes, cypherpunks, minarchists, kritarchists and wild-eyed anarcho-capitalists from Britain, North America, Australia and Europe.
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Russian political thinking, or rather mainstream Russian political thinking, is based on a mistake – not a lie, because it is sincerely believed, but a mistake.
The mistake is to believe that the Mongols conquered and ruled because of divisions among the conquered – and that a strong leader, if need be a ruthless leader, could have prevented the conquest and more than a 100 years of the brutal rule.
This is a mistake the real reason the Mongols conquered was superior military tactics and organization – and it when the Russian acquired firearms and cannons and developed the tactic of mobile (mobile is key – static is not good enough) wagon forts, that they were able to defeat, and in their turn, conquer the horse warriors with their bows and arrows, lances and swords.
As for the belief in a strong (meaning big) state – well, for the sake of argument, let us assume that the Russian election results are honest (a heroic assumption) – only 8% of Russian voters would like to see a smaller state, with the security services put under the Rule of Law.
No doubt the “New People” party is really controlled by the Kremlin – but the official position of the party is that the Russian state is too big and pushes ordinary people around too much (which is obviously true), but it got only 8% of the vote.
Although, even according to the official figures, more than 40% of Russians did not vote at all – regarding the election as a bit of a farce.
Last point…..
Even if traditional Russian political thinking on this matter was correct (it is not correct – see above) Mr Putin would still be a BAD ruler.
He has not driven back, or killed, the traditional enemies of the Russians – on the contrary he relies on forces from Islamic populations, and he is allied with the People’s Republic of China (China is a traditional enemy of the Russians – and remains so, which Mr Putin either does not know, or does not care about).
He has sent vast numbers of Russian young men (who should have been husbands and fathers) to their deaths – and also killed vast numbers of fellow Christian Slavs – the Ukrainians.
Actions of this extreme nature count as treason – Mr Putin is, therefore, a traitor and should be executed.
As for Professor M. – I am not a fan.
Lots of typing mistakes, I will in a hurry to get things done before going off to Hitchin. But the gist is clear enough.
Mainstream Russians believe that a strong leader could have prevented the Mongol conquest and the brutal century long yoke – but they are wrong, only firearms (of various sorts – including cannons, Russians love cannons) could have defeated the enemies of the Russians. When they got them – they did defeat their nomad enemies, even though Ivan the Terrible (and so on) were NOT good military commanders.
The Russians who pushed east – all the way to Alaska (into lands once inhabited by Indo-Europeans – but in other hands for centuries) did not do so due to some cunning plan by great rulers – they were free booters (Cossacks to use a Turkish word – there were always Russian ones, not just Ukrainian speaking ones) – acting on their own behalf.
And the present “strong ruler” has got vast numbers of Russians killed – in a war over lands that Mr Putin himself once (correctly) said were not arguing about – yes even Crimea, when Mr Putin was a young man he said (in several speeches) that Crimea was not worth arguing about.
“Victory” will not benefit the Russian people – not at all.