…Gorbachev was not what he seemed. Because he understood his dependent position … he deliberately demonstrated his distance, and he was afraid of fighting with the Party apparat….

Lev Timofeyev [i]

[You will be part of a] new clandestine structure where you will work with the best of the best. Your personnel files will be removed from the archives. No one will ever know your past. You will become a clandestine agent; you will begin to work for the Fatherland against those who want to destroy it…. I agreed…. I worked directly on cleaning up the archives of the KGB. Together with my files, hundreds of others were removed, including that of Vladimir Vladimirovich Putin.

Nikolay (Anonymous KGB Official) [ii]

The criminal nature of Russia’s ruling structures is well known. The criminal nature of Marxism-Leninism is also known, but often ignored. Today the outward trappings of communism in Russia have been papered over – but not entirely. In Red Square, near the Kremlin, we see communist superstar Vladimir Lenin lying in state, after nearly 100 years, mummified in his mausoleum. The music of the Soviet anthem remains, with different words. Instead of “Leningrad” we have “St. Petersburg.” The tricolor flies over the Kremlin instead of the red banner with its hammer and sickle. The Nomenklatura controls the economy, with dolled-up Jewish oligarchs as front men. The KGB and GRU still function as before. The nuclear arsenal and nuclear defenses are new and improved. The army, however, is still the army of Stalin, the Army of 22 June 1941, the Army that lost a quarter of a million men in Finland during the Winter War, etc. And, for reasons unknown, Moscow has attempted to use this army – this Soviet artifact – to force Ukraine back into Moscow’s fold.

– Oops! –

If you missed the war in Ukraine, here is a recap: The Russian land forces have failed to capture Kiev, have failed to take Odessa and Kharkiv, and they have failed to break the Ukrainian battle line. Russia has lost generals, admirals, the flagship of the Black Sea Fleet, over 330 fixed wing aircraft, 2,300 armored fighting vehicles, hundreds of helicopters with more than 40,000 soldiers killed, wounded and missing. Out of the invader’s 120 Battalion Tactical Groups (BTGs), the Ukrainian Army claims to have destroyed the combat effectiveness of 60.[iii] Meanwhile, the Ukrainians have more tanks in action than the Russians.

For years we have heard that the Russians play chess while the Americans play checkers. But now we see that the Russians have been playing Russian roulette. President Vladimir Putin was said to have only one positive trait; namely, that he was competent. But now we see his bungling. In fact, Putin’s “vertical of power,” modeled on Stalin’s “vertical of power,” has taken a nose-dive. Can Putin pull up at the last moment and save his regime? Some experts say he cannot mobilize a large enough army to save the situation in Ukraine because Russia’s tanks have not been properly stored, Russia’s artillery shells are duds, and Russia’s new arms factories are imaginary. What happened to all the money that was poured into Putin’s celebrated arms buildup? Did that money end up in secret bank accounts in Cyprus and Switzerland?

Putin’s kleptocracy is, after all, a kleptocracy. A criminal regime, having a criminal mentality, cannot do anything straight or proper. Everyone is crooked, and everything is made crooked – from tanks to artillery to missiles to bombs. As ever, war is a moment of truth. Your weapons either work or they don’t. Your troops either know how to fight or they don’t. Your generals understand strategy or they don’t.

And in Russia they don’t.

The Kremlin has painted itself into a corner. Putin is now an international pariah. The homage he previously received owed to a belief in his competence. Who now believes he is competent? Putin is now despised not merely on account of his wickedness, but on account of his foolishness. Everyone is free to pile on.

It does not matter that Putin has nuclear weapons. He cannot kill everyone and he dares not try. In the eyes of a cynical world, Putin’s nuclear threats are therefore contemptible; for nobody is taking his threats seriously. One only has to see the way President Joseph Biden dismissively waves his hand at the mere suggestion of Putin starting a nuclear war. What Putin has failed to realize, at the outset, is that Western leaders have been long conditioned by Soviet active measures to disregard nuclear threats. They were taught that nuclear war is the end of the world, the end of civilization, the end of humanity. You cannot threaten people with the end of everything. They won’t believe you. Such threats have only succeeded in making Putin appear deranged – which is even more contemptible.  

Putin’s “vertical of power” has become a comedy. Russia’s dictator is hopping painfully on one foot, holding a stubbed toe. He blusters, he curses, he threatens. His television toadies talk of eradicating whole cities and countries with radioactive tsunami bombs. But all the while, the angry dictator yelps and hops because Ukraine was in the way.

To underscore the point again: Putin has ever had only one leg to stand on – the one he is hopping on. And it will not support him much longer. Competence was his all-in-all. But now we see him, at long last. He is a fraud. His legacy consists of rigged elections, assassinated journalists, poisoned political rivals and the city of Mariupol in ruins. To what end? – for another month of slaughtering and demoralizing his own soldiers? All those lies, and all that thievery – for what? A military clown show featuring an enraged Kremlin clown!

Everyone can see through him. His regime is at the end of its tether. Even if he wins a battlefield victory he is going to lose the war. He is, in brief, a hollow man; an enemy of true law and right reason. He has stolen Russia’s wealth. He has swindled Russia’s people, and now he stands naked before the world. And the world is not afraid. Even if he unleashes his nukes, he cannot win. He is nothing. The “Z’ in Operation Z signifies more than the end of the alphabet. It signifies the end of Putin.

In his Republic, Cicero wrote that true law and right reason are “of universal application, unchanging and everlasting….” It does not, he wrote, “lay its commands or prohibitions upon good men in vain,” though it has no effect on the wicked. Everyone now sees that Putin is wicked. He has trampled true law and right reason. He refuses to acknowledge the “one eternal and unchangeable law” which is, as Cicero said, “valid for all nations and all times….” Putin’s alleged Christianity is now exposed as a lie; for true law and right reason have “one master and ruler, that is, God…. Whoever is disobedient [to it] is fleeing from himself and denying his human nature, and by reason of this very fact he will suffer the worst penalties, even if he escapes what is commonly considered punishment….”[iv]

In his book, Deathride: Hitler vs. Stalin, John Mosier explained that the ultimate cause of Moscow’s military blunders in World War II “was Stalin.”[v] Might we say, under the present circumstances, that the ultimate cause of Russia’s failed Ukraine invasion is Putin? Mosier characterized Stalin’s military leadership with the following words:

Surrounded by sycophants and lackeys, few of whom possessed more than a grade school education, he continued on, serene in his estimate of himself, punishing those who were blamed for his mistakes, and creating a well nigh total paralysis of the state at every level. [vi]

Putin’s sycophants and lackeys may be better educated than Stalin’s, yet the outcome is going to be much worse for Putin. If these men – these generals and statesmen – were so well-educated and clever, why didn’t they warn Putin of the risk he was taking by launching the Ukraine invasion? Why didn’t they warn him about the Turkish drones, or Ukraine’s determination to fight, or the West’s willingness to send weapons? We all saw how Putin rolled his eyes when his chief diplomat, Sergei Lavrov, spoke about peace talks. “Oh no,” Putin’s face seemed to be saying. “Don’t bore me with your diplomatic nonsense!”

Mosier noted,

No one knows what was going on in Stalin’s mind, and for each mistake, a charitable explanation can be found. However, when considered as a whole, it is difficult to escape the conclusion that his decisions were usually wrong and his judgment faulty.” [vii]

And so it is with Putin. His decisions have been wrong and his judgment has been faulty. Does not power, after all, make stupid? The dictator is soon spoiled by his dictatorship; for who is he accountable to? Who dares contradict him? Better, indeed, to flatter a dictator and win his favor. And that is exactly what a sycophant does!  

Those who criticized Stalin by disagreeing with him often faced imprisonment, torture, or execution. Mosier shows how Stalin lashed out at his best and brightest. Here is a moral disease, an ego-driven cancer of the intellect. The political scientist, Eric Voegelin, had the idea that totalitarian dictators suffer from what he called pneumopathology or “a disturbance in the life of the spirit.” Life is full of suffering and uncertainty, said Voegelin. The pneumopath overcomes suffering and uncertainty by adopting make-believe certainties. “Hence, pneumopathology consists of … derailment from the regular perception of reality and of the creation of a second realty, also called ‘dream reality.’”[viii]

According to Voegelin,

Man cannot transform himself into a superman; the attempt to create a superman is an attempt to murder man. Historically, the murder of God is not followed by the superman, but by the murder of man: the deicide of the gnostic theoreticians is followed by the homicide of the revolutionary practitioners.[ix]

Stalin, “the man of steel,” became a mass murderer. This was inevitable, says Voegelin. The introduction to Mosier’s book is titled, “Pseudo-Reality and the Soviet Union.” Mosier pointed to the rosy Soviet picture Stalin preferred to paint. “[The Soviet state] was a state in which there were, for instance, no airline accidents, no missing persons, and no crime.” Mosier further noted, “When, in the decade before the collapse, curious foreigners were allowed to experience Soviet reality with somewhat more freedom, the shock was considerable.”[x]

Of course, the military disasters under Stalin in 1941 were greater than those of Putin today; but Putin is just getting started. Some say he is going to announce a massive mobilization on Monday. That would be crazy, of course. But there is method in this kind of madness. More men, more numbers, more people to blame; more cities knocked down, more killed and wounded, more atrocities. Maybe Ukraine will succumb to a larger horde of poorly trained, poorly led, looters. Or maybe he just pushes the button.

Madness vs. Evil: Analyzing Putin’s character

More than a decade ago, a book appeared which claimed that totalitarian regimes were, in essence, run by psychopaths and other psychologically abnormal types. The book was titled Political Ponerology: A Science of the Nature of Evil Adjusted for Political Purposes, by Andrew M. Lobaczewski. According to the author, psychopaths see normal people as prospective victims even as they see other psychopaths as partners in crime.

Lobaczewski suggested that large-scale evil originates in “persons with various psychological defects and anomalies”[xi] who enter politics. His theory is that historical periods marked by hysteria facilitate the rise of psychopaths into positions of power. This results in the degeneration of social structures in a way that facilitates society’s worst disease; that is, “pathocracy,” which is government of, by, and for the psychopaths.[xii] 

This phenomenon, says Lobaczewski, “has its own characteristic process of genesis … only partially conditioned by, and hidden within, the maximal hysterical intensity of the [hysteroidal] … cycle.” In a political emergency, a psychologically healthy person called to high office “normally experiences doubts as to whether he can meet the demands expected of him and seeks the assistance of others whose opinions he values. At the same time, he feels nostalgia for his old life, freer and less burdensome….” The pathological individual, however, dreams of power as something alluring and even comforting.

In Putin’s autobiography, First Person, which consists of interviews, the Russian president depicts himself as a democrat who does not intend to stay in power long. He also pretends to be an outsider, with no clear idea how he got into the Kremlin. There is a grandiosity in his self-depiction which is unmistakable. He even says, at one point, that he was not ready to be president. But then, he likes the responsibility. He likes making decisions. He admits that Napoleon Bonaparte interests him more than anyone else in history.[xiii] He feels no qualms about being Yeltsin’s successor because, after all, he has an “historical mission” to carry out.[xiv] Toward the end of the book, Putin admits how satisfying high office is, and how he enjoys “making decisions independently” (as opposed to Lobaczewski’s healthy person who seeks advice because he is filled with doubts).[xv]

The thing that is hardest to understand about Putin is the man’s solipsism. He sees himself as possessing everything he needs. Therefore, he does not need to be briefed. Masha Gesson, whose writings are highly critical of Putin, met the Russian dictator only to discover that he did not know anything about her: “He had clearly not been briefed,” she explained. “He had no idea who I was….” Putin did not even know she had written a hostile biography. He only took an interest because he was acquiring the magazine she had been working for. According to Gesson, “he had grown isolated and solipsistic as only a dictator can.” She had met her nemesis, but he regarded her as another faceless member of his vast staff. Putin was, she wrote, “shallow, self-involved, not terribly perceptive, and apparently very poorly informed….”[xvi]

Is Putin psychologically abnormal? Sifting Putin’s biography there is plenty to show that he has schizoid traits. Described by one source as a “depressed loner” who “often pours his anger out on those close to him,”[xvii] Putin’s foreign policy has long been based on paranoid thinking. By common report he is emotionally cold and humorless. He is also contemptuous and dismissive. He has delusions, especially about fighting Ukrainian Nazis. If I am not mistaken, these are all schizoid traits.

According to Lobaczewski, “Schizoid characters aim to impose their own conceptual world upon other people or social groups, using relatively controlled pathological egotism and the exceptional tenacity derived from their persistent nature.” Lobaczewski added that Schizoids “become zealots for some ideology … or adherents of an ideology with satanic features.” Even more curious, according to Lobaczewski, “Karl Marx is the best-known” schizoid figure in history. “Frostig, a psychiatrist of the old school, included Engels and others into a category he called ‘bearded schizoidal fanatics.’”[xviii]

And why would anyone follow a schizoidal fanatic? Lobaczewski says that their oversimplified pattern of ideas, “tends to exert an intense attracting influence on individuals who are insufficiently critical, frequently frustrated as result of downward social adjustment … or characterized by psychological deficiencies of their own.”[xix]

Is Lobaczewski psychologizing evil? Maybe. Yet his narrative curiously fits with Voegelin’s notion of pneumapathology (i.e, spiritual sickness). According to Voegelin, there are those who knowingly falsify reality “for purposes of enlisting others in a ruinous project of world transformation….”[xx] This statement is remarkably similar to Lobaczewski’s explanation for political evil. In fact, it seems to me that Voegelin and Lobaczewski are using different language to describe the same thing. On the one hand, Voegelin sees the spiritually sick person empowering himself with delusions of “certainty.” On the other hand, Lobaczewski sees deluded ideologues as one of the primary threats to our contemporary world.

If we accept the idea that “schizoidia” has played an essential role in our political evils, then perhaps the terrible events unfolding in Ukraine belong to one man. I am not inclined to think so; but if this is true, what will Putin do next?  Will he extend the war and mobilize more forces? Will he use nuclear weapons? Or will he declare victory and negotiate a ceasefire?

Lobaczewski warns that a pathological process, once underway, “tends to intensify with time.” Early on, initiatives are undertaken in such a regime by persons whose characteropathic features are better hidden. Later on, paranoid individuals come more into play. “Toward the end of the process,” wrote Lobaczewski, “an individual with frontal characteropathy and the highest degree of pathological egotism can easily take over leadership.”[xxi]

A GRU defector once told me that Russia is led by psychopaths. He said to me, “These are not normal human beings. These are crazy persons.” According to Lobaczewski: “Such a situation eventually engenders a wholesale showdown.”

Some sources in the former Soviet Union, like former Ukrainian President Leonid Kravchuk, say that Putin is not as important as we think. Kravchuk has described Putin as a front man for others. A former KGB officer described Putin to me as “a person who has agreed to publicly take responsibility for the generals.” In his First Person autobiography, Putin underscores this idea himself: “The responsibility was on me. Yes, I took pleasure in feeling responsible.”[xxii]

Beyond Putin

One of my correspondents in Eastern Europe is Dr. Anca Maria Cernea, a Romanian doctor whose political diagnoses are always interesting. On March 1, during the first week of Russia’s invasion, Dr. Cernea shared her thoughts. She began by saying that “Russia is losing.” Whatever the bigger plan behind the invasion, “this particular operation of theirs is a failure.”

Previously Dr. Cernea assumed that Russia could defeat Ukraine in an all-out-invasion. After consulting sources in Ukraine, she came to a different conclusion. “The Russians cannot win this war,” she explained. “They will get so entangled in Ukraine, it will be worse than Afghanistan was for the USSR.”

The war in Ukraine, she predicted, will destroy Russia. The cost to Ukraine, she added, will “be monstrous.” Tragically, Ukraine will have to bear that cost. “The [Russian] plan was probably a blitzkrieg. They thought they would take Kiev in the first 1-2 days, that Zelensky would run away, and they would put a puppet government in there … and then they would deal with the ‘international community.’ Given the obvious cowardice, stupidity and incapacity of most current Western leaders, Putin thought he would soon return to business-as-usual with them. It didn’t work.”

And so, we are left with the question of what comes next. One of the things that troubles Dr. Cernea is that Alexei Navalny, currently imprisoned in Russia for opposing Putin, “has sent a message on twitter to the Russian people, saying something like ‘Putin is not Russia,’ etc.” As Dr. Cernea observed, “It sounds incredible that Navalny may have the possibility to communicate ‘with the nation’ by twitter from a Russian labor camp.” She further noted that her father, who had spent 17 years in various communist prisons, “could only send a message to his parents and to his fiancé once, thanks to the help of a benevolent (and very brave) guard. For most of the 17 years, those who were waiting for my father outside couldn’t even be sure he was still alive.”

What is also disturbing for Dr. Cernea is that anti-Western persons and organizations are now opposing Putin, like the hacker group known as Anonymous. “I used to think Anonymous was connected to Russia,” wrote Cernea – “if you judge by its targets … [and] by its support for things like Occupy Wall Street…. Could their [present] activity [against Putin] now be interpreted as an expression of some faction of the Russian secret services fighting Putin’s faction?”

I share Dr. Cernea’s reservations about certain Ukrainian well-wishers of the moment. She wrote, “Please, don’t take this as an optimistic message. Everything is far from over. Things are very close to a world war, a nuclear war, God only knows. Things are horrible already, as they are now in Ukraine.”

Nuclear war is one of Putin’s options. But another scenario may be contemplated. There is a scenario being discussed in Romania that Americans might find surprising. “Maybe Putin gets suicided down in his bunker,” wrote Cernea, “and then a new Russian leader comes along on a white horse and makes peace with the West, and the entire world will be happy … and may relax and go back to sleep. Navalny may be a good candidate for this role. The West will hurry to offer him support, we don’t want to humiliate Russia, do we, [and] we don’t want the hardliners to win. We have to give this reformer, this new Gorbachev, a hand, sign deals with him, buy gas from him, etc. etc. We should be prepared for such a possibility, a new perestroika-like deception.”

This scenario is plausible because it has happened before. And what happened before can happen again. The communist movement is a worldwide movement. Strictly speaking it does not need Russia to win in Ukraine. Communism has made such inroads in the West, that we are in danger of succumbing to it without Russian bombs or missiles. Addressing me directly, Dr. Cernea said that I have been right about Russia and communism – “that the Russian communist system has been building its entire structure all over the world, that they have managed to erode Western society up to a critical degree, that the American people cannot perceive the nature of this system, the West-Europeans even less. The Russians are very good at this. But they also have their weaknesses, some of which are deadly to them. Putin himself is not stupid, but he is far from the subtle Mephistopheles Andropov was. The same can be said for the siloviki and the oligarchs around Putin. Their system is deeply corrupt, their society is incomparably more rotten than the West. The communist system is satanic in the sense that it is entropic. They do set in motion all kinds of plans, they are able to sustain them long-term, and conceal those plans. They cause a lot of destruction. But things don’t always work out for them. I think I have told you about the 1989 Romanian Revolution – that it was partly planned, but it went out of control from the Russian perspective. Another example could be the Arab Spring – which was intended for Egypt and other Western allies in the region, but it spread to Syria, which was not part of the plan…. Even the greater plan to demoralize the West, started by Lenin and continued over the last century has backfired on Russia. If you think the American youth are superficial and ignorant and lack moral values, you should see the young Russians!”

The Russians, she noted, “are capable of diabolical atrocities of incredible dimensions,” but on the other hand “they are chaotic, they run out of supplies, they carelessly expose their soldiers to enemy fire, they don’t mind human losses, their equipment is antique, their tank drivers surrender and offer to sell their gas to locals in exchange for vodka. It’s a terribly messy and savage horde, which reminds me what my father used to tell us from his WW2 experience. The problem with Russia is that it’s very very big.”

But the Ukrainians, according to my correspondent, “are very tough. They are motivated, unlike the Russians. The Ukrainians have changed since 2014. They hate Russia now. It’s a historical turn that has taken place, that has religious and cultural reasons. And Ukraine is also rather big. The Russians cannot do to them what they did to the Chechens. Ukraine is much bigger and the whole world is looking now. Stalin could kill millions because nobody in the West knew or was interested. Rather, they looked the other way. Putin would like to do the same as Stalin, but he can’t.”

Dr. Cernea does not think Putin is “mad in the clinical sense of the word,” though the entire Kremlin is a playground full of psychopaths. “They do threaten the world rather explicitly with a general nuclear holocaust,” she wrote. “Of course, they are able to commit any crime, no matter how monstrous. But there is also another interpretation. They know the West is frightened, that Western leaders faint when they see blood, that they are now in a panic, and still could give up to Russia. The Russians are, of course, partly right to get such an impression. Putin may decide to just nuke Kiev, when he sees he can’t win with the invasion.”

Who would stop him in that case? Do the leaders of NATO and the U.S. have nerves of steel? It seems to me, as well, that none of our leaders take nuclear war seriously. They certainly have not budgeted for it. So why is Europe standing up to Russia? According to Dr. Cernea, Poland was the real game changer. “We owe to the Polish conservative government the radical change in the attitude of the West – most spectacular in the case of Germany.”

The Polish government’s diplomatic leadership and courage in the crisis is worth a closer look. Dr. Cernea wrote, “I think it may be explained by this very state of panic which most of the leaders of Western Europe felt when Russia invaded Ukraine. Maybe with the exception of Boris Johnson, the others were pale and desperate and had no idea what to do. They are psychologically rather weak. Polish PM Morawiecki talked to them, was confident, knew what needed to be done, had a plan, made them feel safer in his presence, as he showed leadership, organization, determination.”

According to Dr. Cernea, public opinion was another factor. European voters were no longer willing to tolerate their leaders’ complicity with Putin. Cernea wrote, “The truth is that Germany, France, and the EU, have all appeased and thus emboldened Putin who thought it was time to get what he wanted from the West. Biden’s disastrous retreat from Afghanistan and his approval for Nordstream 2 didn’t help either.”

Indeed, if we try to look beyond Putin we are still left with the West’s feckless and cowardly leaders. Therefore we must not mistake a future Ukrainian victory for something that the West has done. If the war is widened, and Ukraine is defeated, it will be on account of America’s weakness and NATO’s weakness. It is a mistake to think that Putin is provoked by our strength and unity. Not at all. Putin is provoked by the appearance of weakness.

Thank God for Poland. Thank God for Ukraine.

Notes and Links

[i] Lev Timofeyev, Russia’s Secret Rulers: How the Government and Criminal Mafia Exercise Their Power (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1992), pp. 78-79.

[ii] Bonini and D’Avanzo, “I Cekisti al Poetere.” (As quoted by Karen Dawisha in Putin’s Kleptocracy.)

[iii] How Heavy Are Russian Losses, And What Does It Mean For Their Offensive? (forbes.com).

[iv] Cicero trans. Clinton Walker Keyes, The Republic, III, xxiii.

[v] John Mosier, Deathride: Hitler v. Stalin – The Eastern Front, 1941-1945 (Kindle Edition), p. 103.

[vi] Ibid, p. 84.

[vii] Ibid.

[viii] A disturbance in the life of the spirit, or pneumopathology | (dot)philosophy – theSquare Centre

[ix] Ibid.

[x] Mosier, p. 6.

[xi] Andrew Lobaczewski, Political Ponerology: A Science on the Nature of Evil Adjusted for Political Purposes (Kindle Edition), Location 619.

[xii] Ibid, Location 3070-3077.

[xiii] Vladimir Putin, First Person: An Astonishingly Frank Self-Portrait (New York: Public Affairs, 2000), p. 194.

[xiv] Ibid, p. 139.

[xv] Ibid, p. 206.

[xvi] Masha Gesson, The Man Without a Face: The Unlikely Rise of Vladimir Putin (New York: Riverhead Books, 2012)m pp. 302-304,

[xvii] Vladimir Putin ‘asks Kremlin staff to perform doomsday nuclear attack drill’ – World News – Mirror Online.

[xviii] Lobaczewski, Location 3108.

[xix] Ibid, Location 3124.

[xx] Michael Franz, Eric Voegelin and the Politics of Spiritual Revolt (Baton Rouge: Louisiana state University Press, 1992), p. 125.

[xxi] Lobaczewski, Location 3164.

[xxii] Putin, p. 206.

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117 thoughts on “Putin’s Russia at the End of Its Tether, Part II”

  1. So what will the Russian satanic deep state decide? Will it be peace or will it be nuclear war?

    1. “Russian satanic deep state”

      Can you see Satan choosing peace? (John 10:10)

      1. This latest piece by Jeff suggests that they may opt for peace so that the west will remove the sanctions and they can regroup for Plan B. Any peace will be a temporary peace. The world will declare peace and safety and then sudden destruction will come upon them. 2 Thessalonians 5.

      3. The polls on Russian citizen support for the war are disturbing even if exaggerated 20 to 30%.

      4. Yes. These Russian polls are disturbing. Russians are patriotic. Too bad their government lies to them and robs them.

      5. I believe 2 Thessalonians 5 will come to pass one day, but I don’t believe that time is yet. Personally, I don’t see Putin backing down. Maybe if he goes under the knife for cancer surgery, someone will make sure he doesn’t wake up. Aside from that, I believe things are about to get much worse. I hope I’m wrong.

      7. Russia just said it would NOT use nuclear weapons in Ukraine, despite threatening rhetoric. Let’s hope that’s true!

  2. It was the hated Dick Cheney that said “Weakness is provocative.” That is the only provocation Putin has responded to.

  3. A belated Happy Birthday! (This year’s solar return of yours shows a pretty exact conjunction of the Sun with Uranus, along with an exact sextile from Mars, which is ominous.)

    Gustav Mahler: Symphony No. 5 in C-sharp minor
    Concertgebouw Orchestra, Amsterdam. Conductor: Bernard Haitink (at his very best).

    Part I

    1. Trauermarsch (Funeral march). In gemessenem Schritt. Streng. Wie ein Kondukt (At a measured pace. Strict. Like a funeral procession.) C♯ minor

    2. Stürmisch bewegt, mit größter Vehemenz (Moving stormily, with the greatest vehemence) A minor

    Part II

    3. Scherzo. Kräftig, nicht zu schnell (Strong and not too fast) D major

    Part III

    4. Adagietto. Sehr langsam (Very slow) F major

    5. Rondo-Finale. Allegro – Allegro giocoso. Frisch (Fresh) D major

    1. “A belated Happy Birthday! (This year’s solar return of yours shows a pretty exact conjunction of the Sun with Uranus, along with an exact sextile from Mars, which is ominous.)”

      Would you care to explain it a little better? I got really curious by your paragraph.

  4. Whatever Putin does next, I do consider the risk of him going nuclear in the near future to be extremely real and high. After all, his name is already mud and cannot be rehabilitated on the world scene so he may feel he has no remaining popularity or statesmanship to lose by going all the way. In fact, he might assess it as a way to claw back some respect on the world stage.

    And who knows, the schemers in the West who hate liberty and want a Chinese style social credit system for us, wherein we would be tagged and chipped like cattle, might perversely welcome some kind of nuclear escalation with Russia if it were to expedite their dystopian, neo-Marxist vision. Society has been primed for decades to consider a nuclear war as the ultimate manmade catastrophe; its sheer shock and horror value might be much more able to elicit visceral, impulsive reactions and mass hysteria than slow-boil ostensible threats like climate change ever could. When people are in a state of either total existential panic or post-disaster trauma, radical quick fix solutions suddenly become an easier sell.

    Meanwhile, I find the concept of Navalny as an emergent white knight intriguing, even more so in the context of his recent call to the French people to vote for Macron rather than Le Pen.

    1. From the standpoint of who would be better for Russia in the long run, LePen was a complete loser. She is a Putin worshipper. Macron, while being a globalist, is not a friend of the Putin regime, although to some he might seem so. He did try to talk Putin from backing down on the Ukraine invasion, and he supporting Ukraine with equipment and supplies.

      In the near term, I don’t see Putin launching a nuke war. Doing so would sign the death warrant of Russia, and himself as well. Such a launch is coming, but it will occur because of an invasion dealt with in Ezekiel Chapters 38 and 39, where the Russian Army will be destroyed on the mountains of Israel. Russia will then have no defense, and that is when Putin’s idiocy will totally get the better of him. Well beyond the recent stupidity.

      1. I agree that Russia will attack Israel for its resources and will do so in the near future (I believe the latter part of 2028) and that this will be the Gog-Magog War and is one and the same as the 6th of the 7 last plagues of Revelation 16, that is to say, Armageddon.

        Working backwards from that, it means that Russia must ascend to geopolitical supremacy in the interim years while at the same time the Anglos recede in terms of influence and perhaps military will / capability, because Ezekiel 38:13 makes it clear they will be unable or unwilling to assist Israel when that time comes. But they will protest against it and expose Russia’s true motive, which suggests the Anglos will form their own immoral faction or bloc outside of Russia’s Satanic sphere.

        So the scene must be set in the intervening years for Russia to act as it pleases on the world stage, without fear of repercussions. Which means it must somehow, in spite of its present military incompetence, manage to eliminate or reduce or otherwise marginalise the Anglo military capacity. What else does it have but its strategic forces, given the shambles its conventional forces appear to be in?

        As I inferred in my earlier post, the West is hellbent on going fully tyrannical and I consider that occurrence as being hardwired into the near future in the form of the scarlet coloured beast system, “that was, is not and yet is” (Marxism), from which all the major western nations shall take their marching orders. Will Russia need to militarily neuter the US first, to get America to that point? On the present trajectory (with the US supplying military assistance to Ukraine) one might think yes and also, it would ensure that the neo-Marxists soon ruling the Anglosphere would not be top dogs by 2028. However, as I already alluded to previously, it could also be the case that a limited nuclear war could be engineered in the near future to shock the masses in the West into signing up for the new system of tyranny, although that raises questions of connivance from Russia / conspiracy theories, etc., so naturally that idea comes with the obvious caveats.

        Finally, going back to Ezekiel 38 and 39, it looks as if it is an undeniable act of God, like a supernatural intervention, that will annihilate the Russian and Islamic forces massed on Israel’s north, at least initially so, but Micah 5, for example, suggests a contribution towards the destruction of the attacking armies by the decree of godly rulers (which I take to refer to the US when the Lord brings His children to power at the end of the 3.5 year reign of the scarlet coloured beast system (circa late 2028), as per Revelation 11 v 13). In the end, and before this decade is out, Russia will be finished as a world power and communism annihilated forever, and along with it, the ungodly in general will be removed from authority in country after country as the Lord’s spiritual reign begins in earnest and the nations begin to heal at last.

    2. Quiet man, I just don’t see how the Chinese or Globalists think they can control people with a digital currency when the internet gets blown to bits.

  5. How many nuclear weapons are we going to have to pay for to be returned to the dismembered carcass of Russia this time?

      1. Ukraine sits on 200 ostensibly missing nukes that the US paid them to forfeit. Ukraine has already been turned to rubble with a minimum of rubles, without resorting to nukes.

      3. Why not? There won’t be anything left in Ukraine to lose by then anyway. Subsequently, all of Eastern Europe NATO will be leveled. Why would the US then be expected to be sparred? Putin already said that he would strike fast. It’s not like a duel of two gentlemen standing back, walking ten paces, then turning to aim and fire, it’s more like fastest gun in the West.

  6. Thank you for another eye opener article. Things are waaaay more complex and a thick quagmire than we Americans want to think or believe, isolated on our continent, in our quickly dissolving comfortable lifestyles….. We need God. Ultimately, He is our only hope and resolution. Mercy.

    The psychopath discussion equally applies to our Western leaders. I know Jeff calls them “weak”, but they are sociopathic and dangerous, nonetheless.

  7. Interesting article JR some interesting points.
    While here in the States, the Alt-Right who have recently dubbed themselves, the so called pseudo New Right in a repackaged mad men Madison Avenue technique rip off of Ronald Reagan conservatism is in full overdrive for isolationism and Neo Isolationism of these United States.
    Led by the bought off media pundits, outlets bloggers, political candidates and politicians who are all either bought off or have drank the koolaid with that said, I don’t think things will get nuclear just yet the DOD, is quitely scaling back support for the Ukraine as too is NATO and also the EU.
    Russians, are now shifting proxy hybrid warfare against Poland and Lithuanian via by the Belarussian forces + Islamic fascist terrorists, there are other grey-zones are being set up too DPRK North Korea is set to launch a long ranged IBCM in the coming days weeks ahead; they are also mobilizing more artillery and rocket battery units bringing them up to the DMZ lines of battle.
    While this is going on the Red Chinese navy are currently, doing naval training and exercises that has the Japanese and Taiwan on full alert Neo Soviet Russian nuclear subs are part of these on going exercises I fully suspect, in Biden’s upcoming Asian trip there will be very heavy saber rattling; by the combined internationalist communists forces of Russia, China, and DPRK North Korea.

  8. Even though history has taught us that the (same old) parallel universe of Soviet communism functions as a devilish clockwork AND holds unexpected surprises even to itself at the same time (evil being its own kind, not only of stupid, but of crazy), the introduction of a new perestroika deception would certainly mean another decade or two of delay for them – at a time when everything really would have looked quite ripe for their long-planned great, happy killing spree of World October!

    I would expect them to double down and indeed launch global war, for which they (and the Chinese) know perfectly well that there will never be an ideal time – even if it would mean, to a degree, playing Russian roulette and in fact going for broke. It’s not just Putin who is an evil psychopath; it’s the entire system that’s psychopathic through and through. And the more desperate they become in their current operation, the more reckless and dangerous they might become with regard to the wider picture, too.

    Maybe communism has never been so much about world domination than about world devastation. After all, young Karl Marx in his bizarre youth poetry imagined himself roaming god-like and triumphantly – through ruined realms…

    1. Looking at China, all the telltales point to war. Russia is China’s partner. One does not go without the other. Does anyone believe these lockdowns in China have anything to do with COVID?

      1. Exactly. A very, VERY big operation appears to have been set in motion already, that may well no longer be able to be called off, regardless.

      4. It seems Xi decided to speak up in their favor just now, given all the push-back those under the thumb are expressing.

        https://www.zerohedge.com/geopolitical/president-xi-insists-chinas-covid-lockdowns-will-stand-test-time

        Another strange thing they are doing is throwing away Western tech. Of course we basically do similar, with most US agencies not buying Chinese PCs and networking gear due to concerns about back doors. However, with the CDC buying access to cell phone location data to see if we are staying at home and not spreading the COVID, I think we have better things to worry about, not that I would want their equipment either.

        https://www.zerohedge.com/technology/ccp-orders-government-agencies-state-controlled-firms-dump-foreign-pcs-software

  9. Jeff-
    You certainly have a singularly unique perspective, which at the moment is curiously aligned(though far more nuanced) with the mainstream narrative.
    I will wait and see. However, nearly everyone seems to be overlooking the seemingly obvious fact that Russia hasn’t used its’ most powerful weapon. All it has to do when ready to actually fight for real is turn off the spigot. Sell nothing to Europe at any price. There are 7 billion other willing people to do business with, the bulk of whom are far more seasoned in hardship than the west. They can endure the rough transition away from the current monetary regime.
    When you look at global power dynamics from a moral perspective, you cannot possibly understand them. Stalin was fundamentally remarkable. It is easy to throw shade on anyone, really, and certainly on a madman like Stalin. But it takes true detachment from judgement to see the awesomeness of his abilities. He literally scooped up a million Russians in his right hand and hurled them at the invading German Reich. Yes, he was a monster. Yes he utilized American industry to endure. This, however, can also be seen as a positive in the context of the terrible business of war and dictatorship.
    The bottom line? He won. The rest is irrelevant, from 50 thousand feet.
    Underestimate Vladimir Putin at your own peril. All “the reasons” in the world are much ado about nothing.

    1. Stalin survived only because of massive American lend lease. He collapsed his own economy at the outset of the war. He had his best officers and generals arrested and shot before hand. He lost battle after battle. The Germans captured nearly 5 million of Stalin’s troops. The Germans marched all the way to the Volga. Stalin was remarkable? Yes. Psychologically abnormal people do not normally get out of such situations. But he did everything wrong and still got out. Thank America.

      1. Although to give him his due, Stalin was astonishingly competent in presiding over the active measures that brought about the massive technology transfer of Lend Lease, while tailoring the Western allies War efforts to his own communist purposes, and on top of all that, simultaneously setting the foundations for the eventual overthrow of the Constitution, moral order and free enterprise in the U.S. In other words, his true genius lay in the negative fields of manipulation, infiltration, and the destruction of non-communist societies.

  12. Damn if you didn’t keep saying Putin, I’d swear you were writing about the American democrat party and obama and biden specifically…

  13. Putin just apologized to Israeli prime minister, Naftali Bennett. for factual statements made by Russian foreign minister, Sergei Lavrov. Once again, Putin shows himself to be the most diplomatic voice of reason. The latest news is that the Russian flagship, 409ft Admiral Makarov has reportedly been struck by the same model Neptune missiles that sunk the Russian missile cruiser Moskva in the Black Sea last month.

    1. Putin is not “the voice of reason” diplomatic or other, but there is a substantial reason why he does usually sound far superior to Western polticians when he speaks: he is carrying out exactly the projects he wants to carry out, even if he has to misrepresent them, whereas his Western counterparts are manipulated, blackmailed or bought, and can only do what they are told to do. Given that situation, it is not surprising that Putin can appear like the lone adult in the room (until recently, when he sounds more petulant and unhinged as his plans for Ukraine unravel).

      You are perceptive, though, when you mention his apology to Bennett, since Putin has long seemed intent on circumventing any open hostilities with IsraeI, unlike his mentor and hero, Yuri Andropov, who bears more responsibility than any other single person for the decades of tеrrоrіsm against IsraeI. Behind this facade, though, Putin still cultivates the same Soviet strategic alliances of IsraeI’s enemies, Iran and Syria, which IsraeIi leaders know, but politely overlook (since the status quo with Russia is preferable to open hostility). Much of the rhetoric from Russian influencers who manipulate the Western right is openly antisemitiс, and Putin also knows about this perfectly well, just as he knows that Andropov approved the translation of the ProtocoIs into Arabic and the mass publication of the book in the Middle East.

  14. Jeff, can you summarize Andropov?

    I know he didn’t last long at the top, but he seems to have been greatly respected and/or feared.

    How is he viewed in Russia?

      1. Was he or Konstantin Ustinovich Chernenko more responsible for the Russian nuke war paranoia we saw during these years? Such as seen during “Able Archer 83.”

  15. The Ezekiel Gog-Magog war will occur at the end of the Millennium when Satan is released from his 1000 year imprisonment. Revelation 20:7-8.

    2. No more of this you say Jeff, but it relates directly to current world events. The classic evangelical view is that there are 2 Gog-Magog wars; the first at the end of the present age and the second at the end of the Millennium, the second one being named after the first. Oliver Cromwell’s pastor, Thomas Goodwin, was one of the first to point out duality of fulfilment of certain prophecies, for the record.

      1. You know, Quietman, if an influencer loyal to Moscow or Beijing wanted to derail the discussion here, possibly the most effective ploy would be to divert the discussion down religious byways. While communists know that while conservatives (like Jeff and the readers at his site) are religious, communists also know that conservatives divide along religious lines. You yourself must be aware that your fellow conservative Protestants, for example, divide into postmillenial, premillenial and amillenial camps on end-times prophecy. Conservative Catholics could weigh in with further interpretations, and the Fátima prophecies on top of that. Then conservative Jеws will disagree with all of this.

        As a result, instead of any useful attempt to discuss and understand this-worldly events, there will be a sectarian squabble that might eventually induce Jeff to abandon this site, or at least to close the comments permanently. Conservatives, being religious, all agree that there is a supernatural aspect to evil, and you don’t need to remind us of this. Possession of this knowledge does not mean that we should regard the natural world is simply a puppet play staged by angels and demons pulling the strings, as if there is no human agency (which is not actually a Christian position at all).

      3. Anything touching on these controversial prophecies makes me uneasy. People of different denominations have begun this way only to end up throwing insults at each other. We have no way of knowing if these scriptures relate to current events. I have heard speculations about this sort of thing my whole life, and nobody ever made a valid prediction about politics from it once. In 1914, when WW1 broke out, my grandfather and his grandfather, and his uncles would sit around the kitchen table matching all these passages to the Kaiser and the powers of Europe; only all the interpretations were different. You may find this entertaining, I know. I find it a distraction from what is actually happening.

    3. “And when the thousand years are expired, Satan shall be loosed out of his prison, And shall go out to deceive the nations which are in the four quarters of the earth, Gog, and Magog, to gather them together to battle: the number of whom is as the sand of the sea.” (Revelation 20:7-8, KJV)

      I’ve always wondered what the starting point of those thousand years would be (and whether “thousand years” means indeed thousand years). Now I know – kind of. Thank you!

  17. Just sharing:
    Jeff Nyquist on Securing America (Frank Gaffney Jr.) May 5 2022

  18. “Advance the fright……” – by the means of a
    false flag nuclear explosion – on Russian soil,
    is that a possibility?

    Also, if Biden is actually a traitor, how far will he go
    down that path?

    A set-up? – Russia’s failure in Ukraine a helpful
    speaking opportunity for China?

    Putin: too much “success” – his mental habits are
    cast in bronze (?), or perhaps a mental break-down
    under pressure?

  19. Very interesting Part 2.. Thank you, Jeff. I really appreciated the quote you included from Cicero’s Republic. It clarifies what we lose should Putin or his fellow psychopaths win. Putin may react like the school boy bully who is playing a board game and when he sees he is losing, flips the board upside-down.

    I don’t see how anyone wins in this war. If Putin uses strategic weapons on a wide scale, even if the globalists secretly wish for this to advance their Reset agenda, a world with no internet, no food, no fuel, no communication, no distribution is a pretty terrible place.

    I know of wealthy landowners who can’t find help to mow their fields, feed their cattle, or clean their pool and so are selling their property now. My point is that having money isn’t enough to solve our problems. We have to know how to do many good and productive things, build a community of support and be self-reliant.

    But if we have more war, it will only make things harder and worse. Cicero speaks of true law and right reason as everlasting. Would that all good men heed this principle and apply it to solutions. O tempora! O mores!

  20. One of the things that troubles Dr. Cernea is that Alexei Navalny, currently imprisoned in Russia for opposing Putin, “has sent a message on twitter to the Russian people … It sounds incredible that Navalny may have the possibility to communicate ‘with the nation’ by twitter from a Russian labor camp.”

    I think this can be cleared up quite easily. Ten “tweets” ascribed to Navalny appeared on 2 March this year, calling for Russians to protest and fill the prisons if need be, and for those in the West to protest at Russian embassies etc. There were another twelve tweets of a similar nature published on 22 March.

    Note well the date of the last tweets – 22 March was the day when Navalny was sentenced to nine years in a maximum security prison. During his stay of over a year at the aptly named “FKU Corrective Colony No. 2, Vladimir Oblast” he had been granted a three-day conjugal visit from his wife last summer, and lawyers were able to meet with him until the day after the sentencing (there were press reports in which the lawyers stated that this was the first time they were denied a scheduled meeting with Navalny).

    On the basis of this evidence, there is no reason to assume that Navalny is currently (i.e. after 22 March) free to send out tweets, and every reason to believe that his messages about the war were noted down during meetings with lawyers and other visitors during the 26-day period between the invasion of Ukraine and his sentencing.

  21. Contemplative Observer posts another “high faluting” symphany vid which I take to be an allegory to current / coming events and another poster innocently (for all I can see) asks for further explanation. Why post here publicly if you’re not going to elaborate ? Why the snooty response ? No worries Quietman (do I know you from another forum) … exposure of communism and its antics are good but wont fix our problem. We as His people will be forced to turn to our God on bended, truly repentant knee when we finally figure out just Who (and it’s not some mythical all powerful satan) is wielding the whooping rod. Maybe THAT is what our enemies don’t want us to do. To understand the who, where, why and what we are truly deceived on.

  22. I fear things are rather chaotic and deceptive at the moment. Is Russia really this inept? Is America’s equipment really in such peril? Surly not, but maybe. Brazil is waffling…we are losing (have lost) allies in South America at an alarming rate. Cuba is too close. India leans toward Russia and than bounces back like a bauble head. China is showing brutality toward it’s people and their pets for what purpose? The middle east is being the middle east. Turkey’s inflation rate is 70%. How are the marganilized going to eat in Africa and elsewhere? Australia is seriously preparing for war too. Not to mention Japan, Taiwan and the Solomon Islands. And O’Biden’s mishandling of everything…

    It’s like someone tossed a deck of cards in the air and we’re watching them land. So many theories. So many possibilities. And, I’ve begun to think I have a “kick me” sign taped to my back.

  23. As for “post-Soviet” Russia’s deceptive Potemkin façade, it should have been rather easy to see through (meaning, they’ve been sending highly mixed signals all along).

    (1) The interim Glinka anthem during the Yeltsin years was never meant as more than a sham. When they re-adopted in 2000 the old Stalin anthem (prior to 1944, the internationalist Soviet Union, quite naturally, hadn’t even had a “national anthem”, but only the Internationale), the man commissioned in 2000 with writing the new lyrics for the “new”, “democratic”, “nationalist”, whatever Russia was the same Sergey Mikhalkov who had already written the lyrics for both the original 1944 Stalin version and those of the “de-Stalinised” version introduced as late as the 1970s (by the year 2000, he was 87 years old). This little detail alone shows in all brutality a seamless Soviet continuity.

    (2) Basically all major official buildings still carry – quite prominently so – on their fronts the old coat of arms, believe it or not, of the USSR (enter: Foreign Ministry; “former” Patrice Lumumba University for People’s Friendship, now named Russian University for People’s Friendship; the State Duma; a whole number of railway stations, in Moscow and elsewhere; and so on).

    (3) The official way of address both in Russia’s armed forces and militia is still; “Tovarishch” so and so, meaning: COMRADE so and so! This is no secret!

    (4) Even the renaming of Leningrad into “St. Petersburg” has been a joke, as the oblast surrounding the city is still OFFICIALLY named “Leningrad oblast”. Also, the railway station in Moscow from where trains leave to “St. Petersburg”, is still mysteriously named “Leningradsky Vokzal”; it’s even there on the roof of the station building in huge Cyrillic letters!

    (5) How cheap the relabelling was actually done, is also illustrated by the laughable instance that what once had been the medal, “Hero of the Soviet Union” (a big five-pointed star made of gold, with red ribbon) was swiftly transformed into the exact same thing, with the Russian tricolour as a ribbon instead and now called, “Hero of the Russian Federation”. So much for Leninist “creativity”…

    (6) The Red Star is still the emblem of the Russian armed forces! Not a small detail at all! (And it’s also on Chinese weapons, of course).

    (7) There is STILL Pravda, at least by name; and Komsolskaya Pravda; and Sovietsky Sport; and Spartak Moscow; and Dynamo Moscow; and Lokomotiv Moscow; and Zenit “St. Petersburg”; and places named Marx; or Engels; or Leninsk; or Ulyanovsk; or Sovietsk; or Progress; or Oktyabrsky; or Vpered (i.e., Forward); or Druzhba (Friendship) etc. etc. The same applies for street names across “Russia” – not to mention the omnipresent Lenin statues.

    (8) Remember the 2008 South-Ossetian operation? Valery Gergiev (who is close to “post-communist” Russia’s power centre) conducted Shostakovich’s disgusting propaganda piece, the Leningrad Symphony, right there in the middle of the ruins of Tskhinvali!

    (9) In these past three decades of “post-Sovietism”, there has been virtually zero opportunity for Westerners to travel freely and independently through Russia. Only guided tours were allowed, or sports or diplomatic or business delegations (not to mention your standard leftist journalist), but it all always needed, like in the “good old” Soviet days, a lot of paper work plus, in many cases, an invitation. If anybody still insisted to travel to Russia entirely on his own, the bureaucratic obstacles were deliberately made almost impossible to overcome: You had to have already booked your flight (prior to visa application!), booked and paid your hotel stay (that’s right!), and were thus absolutely blocked from what in the West is understood as travelling. One simply couldn’t, despite their spurious claims to the contrary, as they always come up with hypocritical excuses.

    (10) Finally, the five main Kremlin towers are still mounted with Stalin’s giant ruby-glass Red Stars, which have even continued to be lighted from within with thousands of Watts, 24/7, to this very day.

    Hence, going by the proper meaning of the word “change”, one must say that there has been no change. NONE! It’s still the Soviet Union (for the time being, in anything but name, but who cares about names, when the only thing that counts is SUBSTANCE).

    Sadly, frustratingly, and tragically, “high-profile” people at the helm of American politics (and I’m talking Republican, not Democrat) such as, for instance, super-smart “Ms.” Condoleezza Rice (my favourite), seem to have missed each and every of these myriads of warning signs, mesmerised, as they were, day in, day out, by Soviet disinformation –

    But then, nothing new under the sun really, and I cite Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart (or Lorenzo Da Ponte, for that matter): “COSÌ FAN TUTTE!”

    1. An excellent compendium, Contemplative Observer, of the persistence of Soviet symbology after the “collapse of Communism”.

      Except for Item 8, which is dismaying. You could have said that Gergiev’s use of Shostakovich 7 in the South Ossetia concert was disgusting propaganda, since it implicitly placed Putin and the Ossetians together with the victims of the Siege of Leningrad, and the Georgians together with the Nаzis who besieged the city. That would have been fine, but it wouldn’t have made sense as an item in your list of persisting Soviet symbology.

      Instead, to make it fit, you had to say Shostakovich 7, in itself, is “disgusting propaganda”. How on earth do you justify this? Did over a million civilians in Leningrad deserve to die simply because they were born or lived in the Soviet Union, and so Shostakovich calling attention to their plight was “disgusting propaganda” ? I’ll assume you don’t believe this, since it would count as a kind of “formal co-operation with evil”. But what else is left? The symphony was certainly used in the US by the Roosevelt Administration in its propaganda for the co-operation with Stalin, but “disgusting” or otherwise, that was not Shostakovich’s propaganda and could hardly have been among his plans.

      So I’m bewildered. Perhaps if you cannot bring yourself to listen to any music that was created in the Soviet Union (regardless of the attitude of the artists), you might have confused Symphony 7 with Symphony 12? The latter, written in 1961, did indeed make propaganda for the Party; Shostakovich alleges that he was blackmailed into compliance by the Soviet state in 1960. But by 1962, he was making determined attempts to redress this, starting with Symphony 13, commemorating the Babin Yar massacre on the outskirts of Kyiv (the Soviet regime strongly opposed any presentation of Jеws as particular victims of the Nаzis, as opposed to the victimhood of fallen Soviet citizens in general).

      1. What BEWILDERS ME is that the young Shostakovich didn’t use his foreign travels in the second half of the 1920s to stay out of the Soviet Union for good! (Rachmaninoff and Stravinsky, of course both a generation older and firmly rooted in the old Russia, once out, never returned to the Bolshevik terror state). Shostakovich, in contrast, trapped himself (like Prokoviev and Khachaturian) in a life-long schizophrenic position as Soviet state composer (against his will or not) and of course compromised, for the sake of mere survival. As for the Leningrad Symphony, isn’t the fact that it was readily provided by Shostakovich and pompously used by Soviet propaganda, in itself enough to find it disgusting (after all, it was presented and celebrated as an “anti-fascist” statement, on behalf of the fascist-Stalinist state, ironically)? There’s no need to argue over this or that movement in that symphony, this or that phrase, or motif. His music is what it is (sometimes subtle, in this particular case not so much, but ever cold and brittle). Yet, the ideological purpose of the symphony remains.

        And what DISMAYS ME, and puzzles me, is the predominant narrative that keeps portraying Shostakovich as a “victim”. We don’t grant that status to German artists or intellectuals who collaborated with Hitler’s totalitarian regime. Why do we grant it to Dmitri Shostakovich, who, whatever his inner contradictions, nevertheless loyally served the Soviet cause?

  24. OHEngineer: “From the standpoint of who would be better for Russia in the long run, LePen was a complete loser. She is a Putin worshipper. Macron, while being a globalist, is not a friend of the Putin regime…”

    That’s too bad about LePen. I was hoping since the start of the war that some of these populist patriotic politicians who had previous ties to Russia would have distanced themselves if only for political expediency. I’m talking about genuine patriots who were roped into supporting Russia more through ignorance rather than those who had financial incentives. How hard would it be to say, “Look, Putin seemed sane and competent at the time and he made some good points about the West. But I had no idea he was such psychopath and could go and do something like this. No one expected this.” And then they could pivot to how their policies on immigration, national security etc would do more to strengthen their nations against Russia than whatever the Left is doing. Politics 101. And this would quickly squelch any accusations by the Left of pro-Russia treason.

    Is anyone aware of any conservative American or European politicians who have recently had a public change of heart on Russia? I haven’t seen any changes from the paleo-leaning conservative media/ commentary class but that’s to be expected since they often live in an echo chamber. In some ways politicians are closer to the real world.

    2. Globalism is just another name for Anglo-American hegemony. You can’t be American vassal and patriot at the same time.

      3. How ignorant. Globalism is not Anglo-American hegemony. It’s exactly the opposite. You keep demonstrating that you are abysmally ignorant.

    3. Laura 1986 said: That’s too bad about LePen. I was hoping since the start of the war that some of these populist patriotic politicians who had previous ties to Russia would have distanced themselves if only for political expediency. I’m talking about genuine patriots who were roped into supporting Russia more through ignorance rather than those who had financial incentives. How hard would it be to say, “Look, Putin seemed sane and competent at the time and he made some good points about the West. But I had no idea he was such psychopath …

      Marine Le Pen did, in fact, criticise the Russian invasion of Ukraine and said that war crimes had taken place (although she hedged this about with qualifications). She knew that her previous high praise for Putin would be a liability in the Presidential elections, and Macron took full advantage of this.

      Her party, the Rassemblement national (formerly the Front national) took out a 9 million Euro loan in 2014 from the Moscow-based First Czech-Russian Bank, which had become notorious as a money-laundering operation for Russia’s elite. Two years later, the Bank had its license to trade withdrawn, and Aviazapchast, an aeronautical engineering firm acquired the claim to the loan, and sued the Rassemblement national for early repayment. After negotiations, a deal was struck, allowing the party to repay in instalments up to 2028. Aviazapchast is alleged to have ties with Russian intelligence (it would be hard to believe otherwise) and has been involved in the Syria conflict. After all this, the chances that Le Pen is free of entanglements with the Kremlin are surely zero. Her policies include French withdrawal from NATO (although De Gaulle provided a precedent for this in his partial withdrawal from NATO in 1966, which lasted until 2009).

      As for conservative patriotic parties that seem to be free of Kremlin entanglements, and which have not tended to praise Putin, there is Prawo i Sprawiedliwość (Law and Justice) in Poland, which is the governing party. In Spain, there is the Vox party, which rose from its creation in 2013 to reach third place in the elections of 2019; so far it has kept its distance from the Kremlin, but it seems to be surrounded by temptations from that source (although those have probably receded because of the Ukraine debacle).

    4. Lew Rockwell, the most prominent of the Paleo sites, is a Russian agitprop outlet. The Gateway Pundit has been just as bad. The latter publishes Larry Johnson, and he has been nothing but wrong on the entire subject.

      1. I have watched some of Larry’s videos. I know him slightly. We have have a couple of conversations. He seemed pro-Russian last year when I spoke to him.

      2. I think some of those writers on Lew Rockwell are aiming to get an Order of Lenin medal. Paul Craig Roberts was a columnist for Pravda!

      1. Keelhaul was an outrage. An uncle was in the Navy at the time and he was outraged that they were forced to carry it out.

    2. Interestingly it says: Roosevelt and Churchill were indeed greatly influenced by their belief in Stalin’s “democratic image” and signed his proposal.

      Russians are very good at deception aren’t they? 🙁

      Thank you Seraphim Rose for sharing this.

    4. @ Seraphim Rose, thanks for posting the 8 minute history. Alexander Frick of Liechtenstein stood out
      refusing to go along with the repatriation of Russian refuges. Thanks much. Kevin Taylor

  26. Jeff, not sure if you can comment, I have talked with a Hong Kong person who lives in the UK in regards to the immigration from Hong Kong to the UK under the BNO scheme which the British Government started, I have been told that there are people in the British Government who want the immigration scheme for Hong Kong stopped because it is becoming obvious that the people coming from Hong Kong are not being screened or vetted and this has become a concern for the British Government as China is using the immigration scheme from Hong Kong to the UK to send espionage agents and saboteurs and provocateurs

  27. Looks like Russia is re-deploying its Donbas provocation playbook in Transnistria. The enclave has been controlled by Russia since 1992 but now Russian speakers there are being ‘persecuted’. Watch for stories of Moldovan Nazis coming soon. If this happens will conservatives wake up, or swallow yet more Communist lies?

    https://jamestown.org/program/security-incidents-in-moldovas-transnistrian-region-pretext-for-escalation-or-smokescreen/
    “Furthermore, there are credible signals that the Russian military wants to further escalate and is lobbying to have the remaining domestic political limitations on the use of force lifted. Thus, the Transnistrian region could become a mobilization reservoir, with the raised forces used either to subdue Moldova, assist an amphibious landing in Odesa region, or both.”

    https://www.express.co.uk/news/world/1599493/vladimir-putin-invasion-plot-Transnistria-second-stage-donbas-war-crimea
    Rustam Minnekaev, deputy commander of the Central Military District… “Control over the South of Ukraine is another outlet to Transnistria, where there are also facts of oppression of the Russian-speaking population. Apparently, we are now at war with the whole world, as it was in the Great Patriotic War…”
    ***
    This is either just testing the waters or Russia setting up a longer play, or something that could escalate quickly if Russia decides to go all in on Ukraine.

    Moldova used to be part of Romania before the Soviet Union took it in WWII and the current population is 80% Romanian (excluding Transnistria). I always wondered why it didn’t just reunite with Romania after the fall of the Soviet Union. If that happened it would be part of NATO now and the situation on Ukraine’s western flank would not be so easily exploited by Russia. Since the Transnistria strip is not part of Moldova’s natural borders, a reunification of Moldova and Romania would mean that instead of that region trying to ‘separate’ from small, weak Moldova it would have had to separate from Ukraine instead, and been sandwiched between 2 much bigger and more united countries.

    Jeff, has Dr. Cernea ever discussed Moldova and why a reunification never happened?

      1. I once was witness to an argument between a Romanian and a Moldovian. The latter (who spoke Romanian and had a Romanian name) became quite agitated when it was suggested to him that they were essentially one and the same people. Afterwards the Romanian told me: “they’ve been propagandized and brainwashed” (or words to that effect).

    2. How is reunification of Romanian speaking nation different from reunification of Russian speaking nation?

      2. How is your question not supporting the same idea preached by the German socialists in the 1930s and 1940s concerning German speaking peoples? Just because they speak the same language, are they the same nation? Have you not noticed that Putin claims that even those who speak cognate languages, such as Polish, Ukrainian, Czech, etc. are to be considered Russians?

        Don’t you remember from Jeff Nyquist’s last message, that following the Maiden revolution, that the Ukrainians have become a united nation? That even most Russian speaking Ukrainians consider themselves to be Ukrainian? If Ukrainian, then not Russian?

  29. Patriotism means anti-americanism, unless you are from five eyes or Israel.

  30. General Alojz Lorenc, former head of Czechoslovak intelligence in 2019, year before pandemic and great reset – “We know that capitalism ends. ……. Neoliberalism does not serve the needs of practical politics anymore. The global capitalist elites know they are in trouble, but they don’t have interest in any geniue revolutionary change (that would replace them), so they will pretend doing a revolution without doing a revolution. We know something similar from our recent history, I even admit I was involved. ……. They will hire scientists, artists ….. But the alienated masses won’t accept this, they will see it doesn’t solve their alienation.”

    I can translate the whole conference but it is not so interesting, Lorenc was just a guest there in the audience, participated in QA session.

      1. He is better informed than you, no offense. If the great reset was a communist plot, why would he discredit it in advance this way?

  31. There were no right wingers on the conference. He said that the global capitalist elites will try to impose fascism under a “leftist” branding, but the masses won’t accept it. A year before WEF started talking about great reset.

  32. MANY HAPPY RETURNS, JEFF.
    LOOKING FORWARD TO CRUSHING THE CHINESE, VIETNAMESE, LAOTIAN/THAI, KOREANS ET COMMIES ILK BEFORE THEY CRUSH HUMANITY COMPLETELY.
    CHEERS.

  33. I may be in error but it appears as though there are now two communist camps fighting for world control. The western liberals on one side and the eastern block on the other. And us stuck in the middle.

    1. Communist in what sense? — Marxist-Leninist? There have always been different communist factions. The big ones mattered, the small ones usually got in line or faded. Unity is a principle of theirs. And so is sanguinary discipline when that unity is threatened.

  34. “Commit: Why are you supporting Putin? Just curious.”

    Unlike many in this forum, I don’t support world imperialism and zionism.

    2. How is supporting Putin not supporting world imperialism? Haven’t you listened when Putin revealed his imperialistic intent? When you support Putin’s imperialism, doesn’t that make you an imperialist?

      1. The term imperialism has many meanings, Russia is not imperialist in Leninist sense.

    1. I hadn’t thought about an EMP strike:

      “May 9th is approaching fast, adding pressure on Putin to claim a victory in a conflict in which Russian armed forces have become a laughingstock in Western national security circles for their tactical ineptness. The Russian strongman is well on his way to popping a tactical nuke on Ukraine or to going for an electro-magnetic pulse strike, which would knock out all communications around Kyiv. Because make no mistake, this is a full-scale war against Russia that Zelenskyy, and increasingly, the United States, is fighting.”

  37. Jeff, happy birthday to you. I’m sending you a present. It took me a long time to find this documentation treasure, which is hidden in the depths of the censored (by the KGB) Internet (…..btw: the KGB even apparently changed the author’s profile photo and biography in all current historical sources!).

    https://ia801308.us.archive.org/15/items/russiatranslated1934cust/russiatranslated1934cust.pdf

    Also, readers of this blog (which are unusually few, given the seriousness of the topics listed here) can read this magnificent work when they will sit in anti-nuclear shelters and they will not know where the great chaotic evil comes from.

  38. Happy Birthday Jeff! I thank God for creating you, your mind, patience & perseverance. Keep your faith strong & be patient. Take life one day at a time, with no worries for tomorrow & be present, hold onto peace, peace=power. Think and believe the best, be full of forgiveness & love, ask to be anointed with Joy & gladness, never lose hope and always trust God is in control. Rest in Gods love for you, he will never let you go…that is the abundant life Christ died to give us-receive it and be blessed.

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