Posted on 11/05/2017 10:30:49 PM PST by NorseViking
Right at the top of The Christian Science Monitor’s Daily Edition are two words: “Perspective matters.” Those words come from the mission and lived experience of the Monitor. For 109 years, Monitor writers have reached out and engaged with the world “to injure no man, but to bless all mankind.” And in doing so, they have often found that the world bears little resemblance to our initial perception of it.
For this week’s cover story, Sara Miller Llana visited Russia for the first time to write on the 100th anniversary of the Bolshevik Revolution. She was accompanied by our Europe editor, Arthur Bright, also visiting Russia for the first time.
Now, these are not your typical wide-eyed tourists. Sara is our former Mexico City correspondent and has crisscrossed Europe from Estonia to Portugal as our Paris bureau chief. Arthur has worked extensively with cover story coauthor Fred Weir, who is one of the most contrarian Russia correspondents in the Western press – frequently looking at stories from a Russian perspective.
Yet Sara and Arthur’s time in Russia was nothing less than a revelation.
Make no mistake: All the criticism of Russia is true. It is a regional bully. President Vladimir Putin ruthlessly silences political opposition. The mass media are not free.
But the Russia of so many Western imaginings simply isn’t there.
Arthur called it “surprisingly free,” at least in one sense. “Almost everyone we talked to was openly critical of Putin. It’s not a police state. I have no doubt that if they started to organize and push upward against the bureaucracy that they would be pushed back against. But there’s a lot of elbow room in Russia, a lot more than Westerners might think.”
Mr. Putin is not pulling one over on his people.
Russia has its problems. But no one would return to the totalitarian Soviet Union.
The collapse of Communism brought an end to one of the greatest evils facing the world since Nazism.
We should take satisfaction Russia is a normal nation with normal state interests.
We may be disappointed Russia is not like the West. But it isn’t and never will be.
Link?
Germans loved Hitler at first, too.
If you lived through nothing but disintegration, collapse and turmoil - you would welcome stability and normality.
Those are exactly the things Putin restored in Russia. People would appreciate more freedom but now they seek prosperity and a normal life.
A secure people are able to widen their horizons. Russians will move in that direction but like China they will not copy the West. They will do what they think is best for them.
They are not Americans who speak a foreign language. They have a different culture, lifestyle and values. They do not want to be Western. Russia is rightly described as “a riddle, wrapped inside a mystery wrapped inside an enigma.”
Nothing in our experience allows us to understand Russia.
Sappenfield should be renamed “Ima Sap”. What the CSM correspondents wrote (not linked) is not necessarily the whole truth about Russia under Putin, and Sappenfield’s comments are full of crap.
Who his helping Iran to build nuclear reactors and where is Iran getting its Uranium (U.S. via Moscow, anyone?).
Who is killing thousands of non-ISIS soldiers and civilians in Syria? It isn’t Gorbechev.
Who has been sending arms to Hezbollah through Iran, and possibly to Hamas? It isn’t Bibi N.
Who invaded Ukraine with regular Russian troops (there units have been not only identified but also photographed, often by the Russian soldiers themselves (and photos were found on their bodies in Ukraine)? Russian artillery decimated some Ukrainian units using thermobaric artillery shells that literally burned their victims alive (Photos are online).
Crimea: Annexed just like the Germans did Danzig but this time with troops.
Georgia: Who invaded them and annexed illegally two provinces? It wasn’t the Munchkins of Oz.
Who assassinated Russian dissidents in England (Have a hot cup of Pollonium tea, my boychek) and shot down on the streets of Moscow? It wasn’t Col. Mustard in the billiard room with a wrench.
Who kept Communist dictators like the Castro butchers in Cuba and Chavez and Maduro in power in Venezuela with proxy arm shipments to them through Cuba, possibly Nicaragua, Iran, and East Germany (Grenada, along with armed shipped by No. Korea, which were captured there in 1983. I’ve held them in my hands). It wasn’t Sam Cunningham.
Who armed the PLO, the PFLP, the PFLP-DL (except maybe the Red China got part of the action), etc? Wasn’t the American Jewish Congress.
Mugabe in Zimbabwe. Who armed him? Russia, No. Korea, possibly Red China, via cut-outs such as So. Africa, etc.
THe same for Benin, Guinea (Toure’s red regime), Democratic Congo, maybe even Polisario in Morocco and Idi Amin in Uganda, among other African countries?
Wasn’t the gun section at Toys R Us.
Remember, Putin was a career KGB officer of rank, not some lowly non-com putz. You can take Putin out of the KGB, but you can’t take the KGB out of Putin.
He is shrewd, quite fearless in his adventures, ruthless to the point of being the Lord High Executioner of dissidents (he has lackeys to do what he used to do), ambitious, and and powermonger who will do anything for it.
Otherwise, he’s a nice guy (to the fools who think that way).
Russia is the West, just their version of it.
A year ago, same words, different President. Funny how that works.
Sounds like they have the same media we in the US do.
Putin, Obama, cut with a similar mold. Putin, far more intelligent, but with the same goals as Obama.
Not. It just went underground again. And in the final analysis, "Communism" and "Nazism" are the same. They are both the result of socialism carried out to its full end result.
Putin Roasts Clueless 5th Column Propagandist Venediktov
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=_yo4ilzvB7o
Putin’s attack on leftist media editor. I find it quite funny:)
>(Grenada, along with armed shipped by No. Korea, which were captured there in 1983. I’ve held them in my hands). It wasn’t Sam Cunningham.
Could you maybe PM me about that, if you don’t mind?
>Mugabe in Zimbabwe. Who armed him? Russia, No. Korea, possibly Red China, via cut-outs such as So. Africa, etc.
During the Rhodesian War, Mugabe was largely armed by Red China, while his rival Nkomo was the one backed by Moscow. However, after a while, Soviet support came to Mugabe’s bunch.
Truth
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