Category Archives: Russia

2013: On Russia’s Future Direction

The ruthless atheist Gorbachov and the alcoholic Yeltsin were great destroyers of Russia. They allowed the tearing asunder of the historic country, which it had taken its rulkers centuries to assemble, encouraging the ultra-capitalist sell-off of public assets to criminals, future oligarchs, (‘privatisation’) and profound corruption. At the same time they made the last 22 years of Western-fomented permanent warfare in the world possible.

The current President of the Russian Federation, Vladimir Putin, is intent on correcting the present deviation of history, hoping to end both its unipolarity, by strengthening the Eurasian Union, and its plutarchy, by introducing a luxury tax. It is plutarchy, government by a tiny, ultra-rich elite, that is responsible for worldwide poverty, the current artificial banking crisis and the bankruptcy of most Western countries.

Despite Putin’s weaknesses, he is attempting to weave together a New Russian / Eurasian synthesis which is called on to replace the present oligarchic system. This synthesis includes strong, sovereign government that regulates society, providing social justice with real employment, accommodation, health care and education for all. However, it also includes free market competition for business, without State capitalism, and personal and collective responsibility, founded on hard work and honesty, the cultivation of spiritual values and national identity. It opposes the Godless, materialist West, which already exported and tried to impose permanently its atheist materialism on Imperial Russia in 1917.

Exploiting Russia’s many weaknesses, it achieved success for a time. However, after the Western Fascist Invasion of 1941, the multinational country very slowly and very painfully began to heal itself. Incredibly, in 2012 this long-drawn out healing process is still ongoing. Many of the hangovers of Soviet times still have to be overcome. Place names have to be changed, statues removed and the mummy of the evil pharaoh Lenin, has to be taken away. And then there are Soviet psychological reflexes. Much has been done – but much remains to be done.

As reported by the RIA-Novosti Agency (http://en.rian.ru/russia/20121212/178101146.html), President Putin set out his vision for the future on Wednesday 12 December. In his state-of-the-nation address in Moscow, President Putin said that the coming years would be turning points in Russian and World history, that Russia needed to be economically independent, preserving its national and spiritual identity.

He explained that ‘three-child families should be the norm’. He added that Russian society lacks the ‘spiritual braces’ to hold it together, and that it should look to education and ‘traditional values’ to change that situation, thus reversing ‘the trends of the last 15-20 years’. He noted that, ‘It pains me to speak of this… but Russian society today lacks … kindness, sympathy, compassion towards one another, support, and mutual assistance; it lacks those qualities that always made us stronger throughout our long history’.

He went on to say that while government interference in people’s convictions and views smacks of ‘totalitarianism’ and is ‘absolutely unacceptable’, the government should focus on strengthening society’s ‘spiritual and moral foundations’ through education and youth policy. He has instructed the government to prepare a supplementary educational programme focusing on bringing up children, that is, preparing young people for adulthood through moral education and conferring on them rules of etiquette, values, and traditions. He pointed out that schools are losing out, in terms of impact on young people, to the internet and electronic media, and that they should restore the ‘unconditional value’ of the schools by updating their curricula and offering a wide range of options, accessible to all children, regardless of family income.

He also stressed the importance of teaching history and the Russian language and emphasised the need to strengthen national identity, partly through connecting ‘historical epochs into a single whole’, for Russia has ‘a millennial history’. In that vein, Putin suggested creating a long-overdue memorial to the heroes of World War I and restoring famous Imperial military units, including the Preobrazhensky and Semyonovsky regiments. At last he wishes to make it easy to live in Russia and obtain Russian citizenship for those abroad, to make people want to live in Russia, again reversing the trend of the last 20 years, when Russia has lost so many of its people due to emigration.

Without elaborating, Putin said, ‘We must wholly support institutions that are the bearers of traditional values and have historically proven their ability to transmit them from generation to generation’. He also praised grassroots charity activism, which is on the rise in Russia, and promised a separate meeting with volunteers in the unspecified near future.

Meeting of Native American Chiefs of the USA and Canada to Take Place in Moscow

Pavel Sulandziga, Chairman of the Working Party for the Development of the North, Siberia and the Far East in the Russian Parliament, has announced an extraordinary meeting in January 2013. It will take place in Russia and is between the chiefs of the Native American tribes of Canada and the USA and native leaders worldwide.

Sulandziga added that the association of indigenous peoples of the North, Siberia and the Far East had sought contact with native Americans for a long time to work together. Now, for the first time ever, they had invited an outsider, himself, to their Chiefs’ Council, which takes place on 21-22 December.

He plans to speak there on two themes. Firstly, he will touch on establishing cooperation and joint action. Currently, he is the chairman of the working party on international co-operation between the indigenous peoples of Russia and other countries in the Russian Parliament. His party works in a number of fields related to the development of indigenous peoples. This includes education, youth culture, self-government, cultural development and other matters. Secondly, he will talk about the Evenk people, since the Sioux Chiefs’ Council voiced its support for them.

Sulandziga is currently working on the visit to Russia of a number of Native American chiefs from the USA and Canada, as well as the leaders of indigenous people from other countries. Willie Littlechild, the Honorary Chief of the Crees from Alberta in Canada, Aali Kirskitaua, vice president of the Sami Parliament, and Henry Harrison, chief of the Thabas tribe from Alaska, have already confirmed their participation. They will come to Russia in mid-January, for a meeting of indigenous peoples for a joint discussion of problems and cooperation.

12 December 2012

Voice of Russia World Service Link

The Russia We Lost

In the autumn of 1917 the Bolsheviks seized power in Russia. The centuries old Russian Empire was no longer. The Soviet government opened a new page in the country’s development but did its best to either distort or hush up its previous history. Pre-revolutionary Russia was portrayed as a backward, poorly managed, semi-cultural and semi-literate state. But how was it in reality?

Statistics show that in the first decade of the 20th century Russia experienced an industrial and economic boom that pushed it to the 4th place after the United States, Britain and Germany. A sharp boost in the extraction of raw materials was matched by rapid progress in machine-building, chemistry, electrical engineering and aircraft construction. Domestic agriculture was making steady headway. As a result, the share of farming produce in national exports increased considerably. Russia produced 28% more grain than the United States, Britain and Argentina taken together. European markets were flooded with Russian butter and eggs. The ruble was a stable currency traded at  2 Deutche marks or 50 US cents. Under the last Emperor Nicholas II taxes were the lowest in Europe, life was relatively cheap and there was no unemployment. The law on social insurance for workers passed by the tsarist government aroused envy in the West. The then President of the United States William Taft once remarked that no democratic state boasted such a perfect labor legislation as the one created by the Russian Emperor.

The years that preceded the revolution were marked by tangible progress in the social and cultural sphere. The introduction of free compulsory primary education for all was bound to stamp out illiteracy by 1922. Both huge and smaller cities had secondary schools of highest grade which prepared boys and girls for universities. Russia boasted a better system of education for girls than Western Europe: in 1914 there were 965 women’s high-schools plus higher courses for women in all major cities. Tuition fee was quite low: law faculties charged 20 times less than in the United States and Britain. Poor students got grants. There was a scholarships system of for gifted students.

The high level of education was confirmed by scientific advances. The names of chemist Dmitry Mendeleyev famous for his periodic system of elements, physiologist Ivan Pavlov, biologist and selectionist Kliment Timiryazev, and the inventor of radio Alexander Popov are known to almost everyone. Russian scientists who emigrated after the 1917 revolution were highly appreciated abroad. Aircraft designer Igor Sikorsky, who settled in the United States, designed the world’s first helicopter, and his fellow countryman Vladimir Zvorykin invented television.

French poet Paul Valery called the Russian culture of that time one of the wonders of the world, apparently because despite its secularism it reflected a more Christian outlook than Western-European culture. Suffice it to say world-famous writers Fyodor Dostoyevsky, Anton Chekhov, Ivan Bunin, together with composers Nikolai Rimsky-Korsakov, Pyotr Tchaikovsky, Sergei Rakhmaninov and many others, let alone the unrivalled Russian ballet. How could all that emerge under what Bolshevik ideologists labeled as a police and bureaucratic regime?

As far as bureaucracy is concerned, the number of state officials in Russia was surprisingly low compared to Europe. The national police force was 7 times smaller than in Britain and 5 times smaller than in France, which is an indication of low crime rates. Russia’s jury-based system of legal proceedings commanded the admiration of foreigners for its unbiased and humanistic approach. Economic and cultural growth was accompanied by higher birth rates.  By 1913 Russia had a population of 175 million with the annual increase of about 3.3 million. A prominent French economist Edmond Thiery wrote that if the trend persisted, by the middle of the century Russia would dominate Europe politically, economically and financially.  The then Russian Prime Minister Pyotr Stolypin once said: “Give us 20 peaceful years and you won’t recognize Russia”. Stolypin, whose reformist ideas encountered a mixed response in Russian society, was viciously murdered by his revolutionary opponents.

The Voice of Russia 3 November 2012

Patriarch Kyrill warns Russian Government against Unpopular Policies

Today, Saturday 3 November, the eve of Russia’s Day of National Unity, the Russian Orthodox Patriarch Kyrill has urged Russians to keep faith with their own traditions. He cautioned that recipes for so-called ‘modernisation’ (1) and other Western meddling (2) could result in political turmoil.

In a clear warning to the present Putin Government, under which post-Communist corruption has multiplied, Patriarch Kyrill said that blindly following Western models and forgetting the country’s Christian roots could lead to a new ‘Time of Troubles’. This refers to the 400th anniversary of Russia’s liberation from Polish intervention in 1612, the ‘Time of Troubles’, a crisis ended only with the establishment of the Romanov dynasty in 1613.

‘We should first and foremost take care not to allow a ‘Time of Trouble’ in the mind, in the head, because today there are people who, like Moscow’s oligarchs, offer unacceptable recipes to modernise our life and improve living conditions for our people’, said the Patriarch, speaking on the weekly religious programme on the country’s most popular television channel.

The Patriarch did not name any names, but his message shows open hostility to the promotion of Western secular values by the present Government, as also opposed by all of Russia’s three largest Opposition parties (3). He added that Russians should learn from the country’s past and not make the same mistake twice by allowing foreigners to take control of Russia. After the Time of Troubles ended, he said, ‘Russia had a new lease of life, there was a huge, colossal development of national life, the economy, the government and the development of new lands’.

Commentary:

The Patriarch wants an end to the last twenty years of Westernisation that began under Yeltsin after the fall of Communism. This has only brought alcoholism, abortion, corruption, drug-taking, the end to free medical services, affordable accommodation and employment for all and what was probably the best educational system in the world – this latter the heritage of pre-Revolutionary Russia. The Patriarch, like many others, is looking beyond the tired Putin period. Russia can do better than Putin – by returning to Orthodox Christian values.

Notes:
1. = Anti-Christianity.

2. As in Afghanistan, Iraq, Egypt, Bahrein, Lybia and Syria.

3. It is notable that this comes on the same day that the British tabloid ‘The Daily Mail’ has reported what many suspected all along. This is that responsibility for the London murder of the Russian secret agent, Litvinenko, in November 2006 may lie with the billionaire, pro-Western oligarch Boris Berezovsky and the British Secret Services.