Matthew Kaminski in the WSJ (firewall, alas) on the culture of Great Russian chauvinism bedecked with Soviet faux-stalgia which has driven Putin’s approval ratings into the 80s… Late the other night at 7 Pyatnits (“7 Fridays”), one of a few … Continue reading →
Confucius* is a bit of a gun-history nut. Skip this post if you suspect it won’t interest you. Apparently Confucius is not a big enough nut, as a hugely significant bit of trivia has thus far eluded his gaze. For … Continue reading →
Anne Applebaum has an article in this month’s Foreign Policy that looks at the weird world into which Mikhail Gorbachëv has descended. The Czar thinks that she just about has this 100% correct: that he has wound up as some … Continue reading →
In April, 1949, the fear that the Soviet Union could completely engulf the war-ruined Europe was so great that twelve countries came together effectively to unite their militaries in the event the USSR continued marching West. Over time, many other … Continue reading →
One important factor the Czar omits in the excellent post above is that since Partition, almost all attempts to forge a pan-Pakistani identity have focused on the common denominator of religion: the large majority of Pakistanis are Muslim, and the … Continue reading →
ERC responds to DT’s letter about California. Your link to Dr. Hanson’s article was a real downer. I’m a second generation Californian in my mid sixties. “I’ve seen California destroyed by Progress.“ I’m one of those 20-to-100-acre orchardists: used to … Continue reading →
The Big Guy from Listen To Uncle Jay writes in: “The peasants are revolting!” —Sir Rodney, The Wizard of Id, Parker & Hart O Cruel and Vicious Czar, By the Grace of God, Emperor and Autocrat of All the Russias, … Continue reading →
So the President is maintaining his foreign policy status quo. By that, he will enrage 1.14 billion people in order to attempt to appease 167 million people. Actually a 7:1 enraged-to-unimpressed ratio is better than he does on most days. … Continue reading →
So how close is President Obama to President Jimmy Carter in terms of public perception? Although there are many superficial similarities, many on the Right are attempting to align the two men in order to promote the idea that a … Continue reading →
Willi Münzenberg, who was in charge of Soviet operations to influence Western intellectuals, did a nice job. The payload was a simple formulation. Stephen Koch, for his book on Munzenberg, “Double Lives,” interviewed Willi’s wife, Babette Gross, who survived the … Continue reading →
The always awesome Borepatch (you read him every day, right?) scours the web so you don’t have to. And today, he swung by the Castle with a wildly surreal blend of pin up art and Soviet propaganda. Evidently, yes, there … Continue reading →
The New York Times, in its struggling effort to stay non-trivial, posts an editorial today on Zbigniew Brzezinski, the latter commenting on what the Obama administration should do about Afghanistan. For those of you who do not recognize the name—and … Continue reading →
Kennedy proved eager to deal with Andropov–the leader of the Soviet Union, a former director of the KGB and a principal mover in both the crushing of the 1956 Hungarian Revolution and the suppression of the 1968 Prague Spring–at least … Continue reading →
While heartily endorsing the Czar’s point here that technocratic methods lose wars, your Volgi will respectfully disagree with the Czar’s account of the Vietnam War, in that his readings seem to indicate that not only was the war winnable—Gen. Creighton … Continue reading →
I kind of like him! “Interference of the State, the belief in the omnipotence of the State: that is a reaction to market failures,” Mr Putin said in his keynote address at the opening of the four-day meeting. “There is … Continue reading →
Take it cum grano salis, but here’s what seems to be a Soviet document recounting a meeting with Joe Biden, Dick Lugar, David Pryor, et al., in 1979. Some highlights: 1. J. Biden, the head of the delegation, said that … Continue reading →
‘Puter stands with the Czech and Slovak peoples as they remember the fortieth anniversary of the brutal Soviet invasion of then Czechoslovakia. The Soviets believed emerging freedoms granted by First Secretary Dubček in what was called Prague Spring threatened the … Continue reading →
