Russia is gone
for a short time, in early 1990s, I had this vague, warm feeling that 'things are getting better around the world', particularly with the collapse of the Soviet Union (end of history and all that). But I was stupid / naive (no consolation I was hardly alone), it was not a change for the better in Russia, it was a window that somebody opened, clearly by mistake, and soon slammed it tight, and they're bricking it up fast, same way they bricked up those windows in buildings that stood along Berlin wall (before they blew them up in the end). It's really sad to watch Russia sinking, really fantastic country, but people appear to chose the fatalist approach (no, it's gonna fail, no, it's doomed, no, you don't understand, it can't work here). And with such attitude it's pretty much guaranteed it's never gonna work. I feel sorry for them, I know they're used to 'this', and currently it's practically no different to what they know from commie times, minus foreign travel and access to information, but even these options are being bricked up, unless you're one of those maggots that feed on rot, or bright enough to jump the ship and move elsewhere. And their own, national media are depressing too, those paid by the state peddle the usual story of the West trying - again! - to 'get' poor, defenseless mother Russia, mixed with images of how this West is on the brink of collapse itself (riots, lgbt, refugees, covid, riots, shootings, lgbt, covid, etc.), while those that remain relatively independent seem to have gone into a sort of embarrassed, stony-face reporting of yet another covid wave in St. Petersburg, another corruption scandal in some obscure Russian town where local mayor or police chief played God (but don't you dare to suggest he might have been linked to somebody higher up, who was linked to somebody higher up, who was linked to somebody...). And some inconvenient events, like that Glasgow summit, are just 'disappeared' from the news altogether. Climate? Yeah, we heard of this silly, decadent western idea... Same reporting about the latest google spat: the spokesperson said, the representative from the ministry said, here's today's weather for Moscow. Old rusty, iron curtain going down.