Tyranny is the chronic problem which has affected civilization. Civilization was created to leverage power, and that leverage can be used by oligarchs to confiscate power.
Such a confiscation is traditional in the Kremlin since Ivan I “kalita” (moneybag). Ivan got the monopoly of taxation from the Mongolian Golden Horde, confiscating as much power as he could. Ultimately he and his successors beat the Mongols at their own game. Ever since, when the tyranny in the Kremlin runs into problems, it engages in a foreign war, enabling it to increase the tyranny at home, by calling all opponents traitors to the fatherland. This has ultimately made the Kremlin led empire into, by far, the world’s largest.
The South of Ukraine Putin is trying to conquer was named the “New Russia” in a preceding conquest, under Czarina Catherine II. Unfortunately for the Kremlin, the “New Russians” who were imported got the westernizing democratic bug…
After the confiscation of power, minds have to be confiscated too, because they tend to rebel. So oligarchies tend to produce populations which are not creative. But the problems always accumulate. Ultimately a supine yet bellicose populace is produced, and one war too many is engaged, and the dictatorship gets destroyed in an invasion, often to be replaced by another tyranny.
However now democratization of the entire planet is a must, because WMDs are so powerful, one tyrant could destroy the planet. And global destruction is tyrants’ personal life insurance. Thus world annihilation will be brandished, again and again, as the life insurance for minds so deranged they can’t tell what reality is.
It cannot end well, except if democracy ends tyranny, once and for all. Not to be fanatical about it: small tyranny, if democratizing at maximum effort, yes (like Deng Hsiao Ping’s China, or maybe MBS’s Saudi Arabia). But large military dangerous countries which are getting more tyrannical, like Russia or China: no… and the case of China shows a relapse is possible.
Thus weakening tyrannies to the point they cannot attack the world anymore is a must.
Russian civilization was born out of adversity and has quite a few things to teach that way, and reached heights in arts and science which contributed immensely to world’s civilization. But the road of war, and the trick of expending the empire ever more to reinforce fascism, ends here.
Patrice Ayme
This unique architectural and artistic treasure was built by order of Ivan IV the Terrible to honor his military victory in the Russian-Kazan war. Its full name is the Cathedral of the Intercession of the Most Holy Mother of God on the Moat — celebrating the capture of Kazan with 150,000 troops, plus the help of some West European engineers and military… Most of the population got massacred, the old fashion way, the area got “russified” and Kazan never rose again…
Patrice Ayme's Thoughts 