…..While not quite joining your somewhat rosy depiction of Russia in 1913, there’s no real comparison with Britain, certainly the injustice and brutality of the Czarist state pale by comparison with the Soviet Union. Sibelius was technically a Russian composer since Finland was part of the Russian Empire at the time but somehow I don’t think he’d have regarded himself as a Russian composer. Overall though the collapse of the Romanov imperium was a disaster as was the collapse of the Hapsburg and Hohenzollern monarchies.

As far as the successor states go, it is my understanding that while they were in the USSR, the Central Asian states received a flood of money and supplies from Moscow. Their subsequent expulsion from Russia has led to a drastic decrease in quality of life, more so than what is seen in rural Russia. There’s an argument to be made that the Central Asian states are better off with Russian support, even if that means a loss of autonomy.

There’s some merit in this argument but not a lot ultimately for a nation that basically wants it’s great power status restored and some of these territories are strategically and economically valuable eg. the Ukraine. Sean you’re philosophising but not really addressing my point that an agglomeration of weak successor states existing in the neighborhood of a 500 lb bear is an inherently unstable system. Russia could move on any of them and the west wouldn’t do much both because of an underlying feeling that they are basically part of the Russian body politic (like the Rhineland and Germany), and it’s not worth a major war. You mention Estonia, oddly enough I don’t think they are really interested in the Baltics which they regard as rather like Poland.

Around her doesn’t really matter, except for geo-political chicanery where international relations is nothing more than a game of Risk writ large, a point that Putin keeps insisting on driving home by playing games, provoked or unprovoked, with countries around its periphery that end up with its economy and foreign exchange getting pummeled. It reminds of a prominent jihadist who pointed out that the logic of al-Qaeda vis a vis “getting back” at America was horribly me myopic; for the act of bombing 3000, they’ve managed to get millions more killed and left a whole region in tatters.

In many of the same ways that America’s own foreign dalliances end up costing us significantly more than we ever wanted, so is it with Russia’s, regardless of any claims, historical or cultural. And its not especially coherent as to why reclaiming alot of these relatively minor countries would be worth the trouble. I mean hey, I might be missing out on something going on in Estonia by god, but I doubt its worth it enough to acquire it.

……Certainly half the rural transport of goods seemed to be horse drawn……I’m afraid I don’t have your talent…..The tractor factory was hilarious….big but hilarious……it really was the old Russian joke “They pretend to pay us, we pretend to work” in reality…..And yet these were the guys who broke the Wehrmacht so go figure

I stand in awe of your parodic gift. Bravo, sir!

Actually, you make the Soviets sound kind of pastoral and idyllic. But, then, I’ve always been good at looking past squalor.

I hope I am correct in crediting you with a very dry wit and an ironic sensibility

Lines like “just imagine what might have been achieved without foreign interference.” and a Germany “where civil unrest was all but unheard of ” don’t grow on trees.

….I also wanted to say word or two in favor of ducking stools, pricking for the kings evil, the black hundreds and the holy office.

I actually visited the Soviet Union a few times in the late seventies and early eighties. I knew it was doomed when I visited a giant tractor factory built for them by the Italians and observed women in their break pealing potatoes by the assembly line; a couple having sex in a curtained off welding area; and piles of engines stacked directly on top of each other and not in stillages. All true. There were other signs too. If you went 25 miles outside a major city it was like Tsarist Russia. The CIA couldn’t have made the trip but then the truth might have affected the budgets back home.