with nearly no comment, for want of time.

Richard Pipes published an important piece (preview only, subscription required) on Russian society in Foreign Affairs. Some of his ideas are very close to what I’ve been saying all along (lack of social cohesion, an underdeveloped society); some are highly questionable; he also misrepresents a few facts, as a good historian should. This page at the Carnegie Moscow Center has a link to a version of Pipes’ article.

A more controversial article is La Patrie trahie par la République by Jean Raspail, the author of (inter alia) The Camp of the Saints (1973). (I have found an English translation but on sites I don’t think I should link to.) To appreciate something you once possessed, you have to lose most of it. This applies to nations and civilizations as well as human beings, and not so much to the land “lost” to new and sometimes uninvited immigrants as to the past — to a history, culture and faith reduced to a footnote in a trendy textbook, or turned into a childish stereotype.

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