A farcical emperor, but the fact that he seems farcical to someone (for example, me) does not make the evil he creates any less real. That hell is anything but farcical.
They say that all general secretaries of the CPSU were buried according to the protocols made for the burials of emperors. They mostly lived like that, according to - imperial protocols. In ego imagination Vladimir Putin those plans melt away, everything becomes a jumble of imperial nostalgia, without meaning, as is always the case with similar jumbles.
The dullness of power is abominable. Rituals of power cannot mask the terrifying banality that lies behind everything and makes hell on earth possible. Remember Putin's attempts to be funny, which only show the true face - the smug dullness of power. The most fun for such characters is other people's weakness. It's the only humor they understand, the only thing that really makes them smile. It seems that the Ukrainian adventure brings him less and less smiles.
The resistance to this monstrous war in Russia is not small, and that raises hope. An anti-war letter by Russian scientists or a text by a great writer Mihail Shishkin show that this madness of Putin's is still without consensus in Russia. According to media reports, it seems that the resistance to the war is much more pronounced than it was in the nineties in our country. Day by day, that resistance will be more massive, despite the arrests.
It is unlikely that Putin is not aware of all this. Or is it really at that stage where the dictator executes himself in his labyrinth. And stop distinguishing between fiction and reality, people and spirits, ideas and apparitions...
It even seems that support for this war is greater among Montenegrin Serbs than among Russians. Disgusting expressions of support for Russian aggression in Montenegro represent the true picture of the sinking of political Russophilism today and here. Who is their enemy? And why? A close, Slavic and Orthodox country? The strength is this Russian school...
And Kiev is waiting for convoys, Ukrainian cities are trembling. One of the cities I haven't been to that I love because of its writer is Odessa. (Like Dublin or Buenos Aires.) Take it, read it again Stories from Odessa Isaac Emanuilovich Babel, published in our country under the name "Odesa". Forgotten master, with Bulgakov i Platonova, one of the greatest writers of the Russian language in the first half of the XNUMXth century. While reading Babel, I am convinced that every bomb that falls on Odessa is not only a crime against humanity, but also a crime against literature.
Lovers of analogies like to rummage through the rich library of Russian history, looking for the right "part" for the current emperor. Since I myself am not immune to that (futile) entertainment, in an earlier text I mentioned that Putin is the most similar Nicholas I Romanov.
Between 1825 and 1856 Russia was ruled by Tsar Nicholas I, he succeeded the successful Tsar, the victor over Napoleon, Alexander I. Nikolai earned Russia the nickname "The Gendarme of Europe". For example, when the revolution broke out in Hungary in 1848, he sent a quarter of a million soldiers to help the young emperor Franz Josef and pacified the rebellious Hungary. However, this did not prevent the Austrian emperor from joining the coalition that defeated Nicholas I in the Crimean War just eight years later. The defeat was so unimaginable that the emperor soon died in depression and disbelief.
Will Crimea, sooner or later, be the place of another, symbolic or real, sobering up of Russia, another end of the imperial dream? It would be good if that happened. However, waking up is the most effective way to end the nightmare. Even in the case of farcical pseudo-emperors.
When I talk about awakening, there is no doubt that it would please today's beleaguered Russia, but an even more urgent awakening is needed in the so-called the free world. Before that breech breaks too.
Because, as it seems, today's Europe has a new one Hitler, but it is difficult to say - and that is the question of all questions - whether there is a new one Churchill.
Bonus video:
