Finally some well researched truth telling, helping to explain that the west did not lose Russia, after the fall of the Soviet Union. It was never in the west’s power to determine much of what would become Russia in the post-Soviet era.
The beginning, with the KGB “In league with Russian organized crime, starting at the end of the 1980s”, to the end with “Once in power, the new elite sought to maintain control using the same methods that the KGB always used to maintain control: through the manipulation of public emotion, and by undermining the institutions of the West, and the ideals of the West, in any way that it can”; the west never had a chance.
Only two institutions in Russia had both lots of power and intact institutional organizations - the KGB and the Mob (the mob always existed in the underbelly of the Soviet Union - the “fixed” things and got things, and got things done for the communists in public office; doing their dirty work and keeping party officials hands clean).
What has permitted the near seamless transition of authoritarianism from the imperial Czars, to the Soviet Czars to Putin’s mobocracy in Russia? There is only one answer and that is Russian culture. It is no different than the role of culture in China where imperial emperors were merely replaced by Mao and now by a collective ruling just as an emperor, and with designs on the world near then just like ancient Chinese emperors.
well my sil had this Che magnet on his refrigerator, and I loathe Che but it made some sense if he indeed said it....”murderous leaders are removed to be replaced with leaders who become murderous”....that’s as close as I can remember.....coming from Che, he had a lot of nerve to talk about murder...