Category history

Other people’s wars

American bloggers find it easy to talk and make jokes about other countries’ wars. Perhaps it’s because Americans haven’t fought a “tragical” war since a long time ago. By a “tragical” war I mean one fought on one’s own land…

London 2003, Moscow 1990

A million people marching through London. Impressive. Even at the peak of the reform movement in Russia, in the late 1980s, the largest gatherings in Moscow totaled 500,000 [up to a million probably – added in July 2017] people or…

Who saved whom from what?

Drezner on “we saved their cheese-eating asses”. (I stumbled on the link at vpostrel.com.) Here’s my two cents: It’s simply incorrect to say that the US “saved France from Hitler” without mentioning the Allied war effort in general. Suppose an…

Not a scourge of Moscow

As a side note, Ghengis Khan did not invade Kievan Rus (although three Russian princes lost a battle with his generals on the river Kalka); his posterity did, though. As for Moscow, it was a town of limited significance at that…

The State of the Arts under Communism

Brian Micklethwait comments on a piece by Alan Little, who is asking: “So why does art produced under Stalin not make me queasy whereas art produced under Hitler does?” Because it is simply not true that all works of art and letters produced…