Unfortunately, Russia is also the birthplace of communism, one of humanity’s greatest tragedies
HI!!! Save yourself if you can.
Russia continues to ride the wave, but for the wrong reasons. It’s the old “speak badly, but talk about me” strategy.
Despot Vladimir Putin went too far in the last “election,” even by Russian standards. I had a boss, born and raised in Lipetsk, the birthplace of the Soviet steel industry, who insisted “this is all nothing but American fantasy.” According to him, “Crimea has always been ours, so there is no harm in regaining what once belonged to us.”
I responded by saying that Portugal could also ask for the reconquest of Brazil since they were the “discoverers” and that Pindorama has always belonged to the Portuguese Crown. There was silence at the table…
With Ukraine, Putin’s logic is the same. The region has always been part of the Russian Empire and therefore, naturally, should return to the bosom of Mother Russia. Ukrainians gained independence after the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991, but before then the country was inhabited by Poles, Lithuanians and Cossacks, being within the Austro-Hungarian and Russian empires.
The article has already started and you haven’t played this yet electronic music playlist. They are the best in high rotation at the moment on the shelves of Russian cars. Imagine Putin releasing the skeleton onto the tarmac with dry ice up to his neck and a tie tied around his forehead.
Mother Russia: an amazing country
If I have to choose between Moscow and St. Petersburg I prefer the second. It’s the same dispute between Sao Paulo and Rio: one is the gray megalopolis with hellish traffic, many intertwined worlds and the business center. The other is art, culture, Russian style, a mind-blowing museum, the Hermitage, and the backdrop to the adventures of many of Fyodor Dostoevsky’s characters.
The Russian blocks are gigantic, about 300 meters long. Walking there is cold, literally. Ladas are everywhere, in all shapes, colors and states of preservation. They are a Russian institution, the most loved and idolized car in the world after the Trabants. I’ll have one more.
Writing about Russia without talking about Ladas is impossible. The best car ever built is Russian! I feel sorry for the Land Rovers, Ferraris, Aston Martins and Mercedes of life. Omnipresent, loved and hated, all-rounder, mother’s heart, indestructible, immortal and unstoppable. Easy and economical to maintain, it has been carrying people, goods, dogs, chickens, hay, rice, brides, emotions, tears, laughter, drama, comedy, desperation, rush, fun and pleasure since it was created.
Matryoshka dolls are scattered among stalls on the streets next to chic cafes and decadent restaurants frequented by long-suffering and hard-working, but friendly and attentive people.
The cold is an implacable lord who mercilessly governs the fate of thousands of Lives. He penetrates the soul, attacks the liver and clouds the sight. Just a borscht, the traditional beetroot soup, and lots of vodka last.
If you want to see wealth, power and exaggeration, visit the Peter and Catherine Palaces in St. Petersburg. Legend has it that the famous amber room stolen by the Nazis has not yet been found. That’s a replica right there. I highly doubt it and I bet Putin found it a long time ago and had the original installed in his dacha on the edge of the Caspian Sea.
The Cyrillic alphabet doesn’t help much, but who needs it to appreciate the beauty of each Moscow metro station or the Cathedral of Spilled Blood in St. Petersburg? The Kremlin has its treasures, Lenin is embalmed nearby and St. Basil’s Cathedral impresses everyone. We passed by the Bolshoi, but it was a holiday and unfortunately it was closed
Russian literature is perhaps the richest, densest and deepest in the world, without exaggeration. Pushkin, Dostoevsky, Tolstoy, Gorky, Chekhov, do they want more?
Classical music then? Tchaikovsky, Prokofiev, Shostakovich, Stravinsky and Rachmaninov form a writing that will be the envy of Austrians, Italians, French and Germans.
Unfortunately, Russia is also the birthplace of communism, one of humanity’s greatest tragedies. Lenin, Marx and Engels forgive me, but anyone who still defends this indefensible system is misinformed, ignorant or both. It is simply the political and economic system that has killed the most in history. Stalin’s purges, the Holodomor, the deplorable Ukrainian genocide, and Mao’s “Great Leap Forward” killed tens of millions of people in China alone.
In Ukraine, the vast majority starved thanks to the “brilliant” agricultural collectivization program in which the state brought together farmers’ lands and herds into collective farms. Anyone who resisted the program was arrested and deported to a gulag in Siberia. Since farmers on collective farms could not receive grain until they had completed their unattainable production quotas, hunger spread to all levels.
Despite the many legacies left to the world and the masterful creations that persist to this day, humans are capable of thinking only of destruction. In this quest for pure and simple power, so that Russia can once again have the relevance it once had in history, Putin has managed to create a war in 2022.
And the end is far away. Unfortunately.
Worth seeing and reading
MOVIE: Stalker (1979) – Andrei Tarkovsky. A deep dive into the soul.
This is one of the films that most moves the viewer. It’s dark, mysterious, philosophical, slow. Director Andrei Tarkovsky was famous for his intellectual depth and his use of long takes with few cuts. The sequences in which the camera follows the characters as if it were someone hidden observing the scene are famous. Tarkovsky’s camera is the real “stalker”.
In the film, a writer and a scientist want to enter the “Zone”, a mystical area where the laws of physics do not apply and the place is monitored by the government. Only “stalkers” can enter it and so the professor and the scientist hire one of them to guide them.
see the full movie made available by Mosfilm, Russia’s oldest and largest film studio. The film has been restored and is available in high resolution with subtitles.
I’ve already seen it twice and am seriously considering a third session.
BOOK: The Spy and the Traitor – Ben Macintyre (2018). An unmissable spy thriller.
A thrilling true Cold War story featuring a KGB spy infiltrating the West.
It’s one of the best books about espionage I’ve ever read. KGB double spy Oleg Gordievsky single-handedly changed the course of the Cold War and history.
Alone is a way of saying that although he was often alone on his double, sometimes triple, journey, he never worked without the help of other people.
Gordievsky never agreed with the philosophy of communism. Son of a former agent and inspired by his older KGB brother, his choice was natural. Living for three years in Denmark as a spy disguised as a diplomat in Copenhagen, he experienced the freedom of expression, music, literature, culture, security and social well-being of a developed capitalist country. This completely changed his beliefs and his life philosophy.
There he was recruited by the British secret service, MI6, and began working for the West, transmitting valuable information on how the communist minds and the entire espionage and surveillance apparatus worked in the former Soviet Union, which at the height of the War Cold had more than 1 million KGB agents infiltrated in the four corners of the world.
Oleg managed to climb high in the hierarchy and ended up, guess what… in London. Better, impossible! The higher he climbed, the more important the information he had access to and which he passed on to the English.
Ben Macintyre details the entire period, the secrets revealed and the spectacular rescue operation of Oleg taken from the USSR by MI6 when he was recalled.
His importance and influence were so great that he instructed the then British Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher on how she should behave during Andropov’s funeral and even what clothing she should wear! Oleg essentially dictated the agenda for both sides of the meeting between Thatcher and Gorbachev, a rising star of the Communist Party at the time.
I reached the end of the book with four chapters to complete. I only started at 3 in the morning because it was impossible to stop. The tension grows and the author masterfully describes the outcome of Oleg Gordievsky’s double life.
Electrifying and very well written.
I don’t know if it was released in Brazil, but if you read it in English you can’t miss it.
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Source: Terra
Rose James is a Gossipify movie and series reviewer known for her in-depth analysis and unique perspective on the latest releases. With a background in film studies, she provides engaging and informative reviews, and keeps readers up to date with industry trends and emerging talents.
