Mark Steyn: The death of Mother Russia

Reader Jack Fulmer sent me the following item, which appeared a century ago — 13 September 1905 — in the Paris edition of the New York Herald:

And in the long run it’s hard to see why they won’t get it, the only question being whether it’s still worth getting. Moscow has reduced Grozny to rubble, yet is further than ever from solving its Chechen problem. Moreover, the sheer blundering thuggery of the Russian approach has no merits other than affording Moscow some short-term sadistic pleasure as it exacerbates the situation. The allegedly seething ‘Arab street’, which the West’s media doom-mongers have been predicting for four years will rise up in fury against the Anglo-American infidels, remains as seething as a cul-de-sac in Pinner on a Wednesday afternoon. But the Russian Federation’s Muslim street is real, and on the boil.

Remember the months before 9/11? The new US President had his first meeting with the Russian President. ‘I looked the man in the eye and found him very straightforward and trustworthy,’ George W. Bush said after two hours with Vladimir Putin. ‘I was able to get a sense of his soul.’ I’m all for speaking softly and carrying a big stick, but that’s way too soft; it’s candlelight-dinner-with-the-glow-reflecting-in-the-wine-glass-just-before-you-ask-her-to-dance-to-‘Moonlight-Becomes-You’ soft. Even at the time, many of us felt like yelling at Bush: Get a grip on yourself, man! Lay off the homoerotic stuff about soulmates! This is a KGB apparatchik you’re making eyes at.

But Putin was broadly supportive — or at least not actively non-supportive — on Afghanistan (a very particular case) and Nato expansion (a fait accompli), and some experts started calling Vlad the most Westernised Russian strongman since Peter the Great and cooing about a Russo-American alliance that would be one of the cornerstones of the post-Cold War world.

It’s not like that today. From China to Central Asia to Ukraine, from its covert efforts to maintain Saddam in power to its more or less unashamed patronage of Iran’s nuclear ambitions, Moscow has been at odds with Washington over every key geopolitical issue, and a few non-key ones, too, culminating in Putin’s tirade to Bush that America was flooding Russia with sub-standard chicken drumsticks and keeping the best ones for herself. It was a poultry complaint but indicative of a retreat into old-school Kremlin paranoia. Putin was sending America’s chickens home to roost. I wonder if Bush took a second look into the soulful depths of Vladimir’s eyes and decided he wasn’t quite so finger-lickin’ good after all.

Russia’s export of ideology was the decisive factor in the history of the last century. It seems to me entirely possible that the implosion of Russia could be the decisive factor in this new century. As Iran’s nuke programme suggests, in many of the geopolitical challenges to America there’s usually a Russian component somewhere in the background.

In fairness to Putin, even if he was ‘very straightforward and trustworthy’, he’s in a wretched position. Think of the feet of clay of Western European politicians unwilling to show leadership on the Continent’s moribund economy and deathbed demography. Russia has all the EU’s problems to the nth degree, and then some. ‘Post-imperial decline’ is manageable; a nation of psychotic lemmings isn’t. As I’ve noted before in this space, Russia is literally dying. From a population peak in 1992 of 148 million, it will be down to below 130 million by 2015 and thereafter dropping to perhaps 50 or 60 million by the end of the century, a third of what it was at the fall of the Soviet Union. It needn’t decline at a consistent rate, of course. But I’d say it’s more likely to be even lower than 50 million than it is to be over 100 million. The longer Russia goes without arresting the death spiral, the harder it is to pull out of it, and when it comes to the future most Russian women are voting with their foetus: 70 per cent of pregnancies are aborted.

A smaller population needn’t necessarily be a problem, and especially not for a state with too much of the citizenry on the payroll. But Russia is facing simultaneously a massive ongoing drain of wealth out of the system. Whether or not Dominic Midgley was correct the other day in his assertion that the émigré oligarchs prefer London to America, I cannot say. But I notice my own peripheral backwater of Montreal has also filled up with Russkies whose impressive riches have been acquired recently and swiftly. It doesn’t help the grim demographic scenario if your economic base is also being systematically eaten away.

Add to that the unprecedented strains on a ramshackle public health system. Russia is the sick man of Europe, and would still look pretty sick if you moved him to Africa. It has the fastest-growing rate of HIV infection in the world. From virtually no official Aids cases at the time Putin took office, in the last five years more Russians have tested positive than in the previous 20 for America. The virus is said to have infected at least 1 per cent of the population, the figure the World Health Organisation considers the tipping point for a sub-Saharan-sized epidemic. So at a time when Russian men already have a life expectancy in the mid-50s — lower than in Bangladesh — they’re about to see Aids cut them down from the other end, killing young men and women of childbearing age, and with them any hope of societal regeneration. By 2010, Aids will be killing between a quarter and three-quarters of a million Russians every year. It will become a nation of babushkas, unable to muster enough young soldiers to secure its borders, enough young businessmen to secure its economy or enough young families to secure its future. True, there are regions that are exceptions to these malign trends, parts of Russia that have healthy fertility rates and low HIV infection. Can you guess which regions they are? They start with a ‘Mu-’ and end with a ‘-slim’.

So the world’s largest country is dying and the only question is how violent its death throes are. Yesterday’s Russia was characterised by Churchill as a riddle wrapped in a mystery inside an enigma. Today’s has come unwrapped: it’s a crisis in a disaster inside a catastrophe. Most of the big international problems operate within certain geographic constraints: Africa has Aids, the Middle East has Islamists, North Korea has nukes. But Russia’s got the lot: an African-level Aids crisis and an Islamist separatist movement sitting on top of the biggest pile of nukes on the planet. Of course, the nuclear materials are all in ‘secure’ facilities — more secure, one hopes, than the secure public buildings in Nalchik that the Islamists took over with such ease last week.

Russia is the bleakest example on the planet of how we worry about all the wrong things. For 40 years the environmentalists have warned us that the jig was up: there are too many people (see Paul Ehrlich’s comic masterpiece of 1970 The Population Bomb) and too few resources — as the Club of Rome warned in its 1972 landmark study The Limits To Growth, the world will run out of gold by 1981, of mercury by 1985, tin by 1987, zinc by 1990, petroleum by 1992, and copper, lead and gas by 1993. Instead, poor old Russia is awash with resources but fatally short of Russians — and, in the end, warm bodies are the one indispensable resource.

What would you do if you were Putin? What have you got to keep your rotting corpse of a country as some kind of player? You’ve got nuclear know-how — which a lot of ayatollahs and dictators are interested in. You’ve got an empty resource-rich eastern hinterland — which the Chinese are going to wind up with one way or the other. That was the logic, incidentally, behind the sale of Alaska: in the 1850s, Grand Duke Konstantin Nikolaevich, the brother of Alexander II, argued that the Russian empire couldn’t hold its North American territory and that one day either Britain or the United States would simply take it, so why not sell it to them first? The same argument applies today to the 2,000 miles of the Russo–Chinese border. Given that even alcoholic Slavs with a life expectancy of 56 will live to see Vladivostok return to its old name of Haishenwei, Moscow might as well flog it to Beijing instead of just having it snaffled out from under.

That’s the danger for America — that most of what Russia has to trade is likely to be damaging to US interests. In its death throes, it could bequeath the world several new Muslim nations, a nuclear Middle East and a stronger China. In theory, America could do a belated follow-up to the Alaska deal and put in a bid for Siberia. But Russia’s calculation is that sooner or later we’ll be back in a bipolar world and that, in almost any scenario, there’s more advantage in being part of the non-American pole. A Sino–Russian strategic partnership has a certain logic to it, and so, in a darker way, does a Russo–Muslim alliance of convenience. In 1989, with the Warsaw Pact crumbling before his eyes, poor old Mikhail Gorbachev received a helpful bit of advice from the cocky young upstart on the block, the Ayatollah Khomeini: ‘I strongly urge that in breaking down the walls of Marxist fantasies you do not fall into the prison of the West and the Great Satan,’ wrote the pioneer Islamist nutcase. ‘I openly announce that the Islamic Republic of Iran, as the greatest and most powerful base of the Islamic world, can easily help fill up the ideological vacuum of your system.’

In an odd way, that’s what happened everywhere but the Kremlin. As communism retreated, radical Islam seeped into Afghanistan and Indonesia and the Balkans. Crazy guys holed up in Philippine jungles and the tri-border region of Argentina, Brazil and Paraguay which would have been ‘Marxist fantasists’ a generation or two back are now Islamists: it’s the ideology du jour. Even the otherwise perplexing enthusiasm of the western Left for the jihad’s misogynist homophobe theocrats is best understood as a latterday variation on the Hitler/Stalin pact. And, despite Gorbachev turning down the offer, it will be Russia’s fate to have large chunks of its turf annexed by the Islamic world.

We are witnessing a remarkable event: the death of a great nation not through war or devastation but through its inability to rouse itself from its own suicidal tendencies. The ‘ideological vacuum’ was mostly filled with a nihilist fatalism. Churchill got it wrong: Russia is a vacuum wrapped in a nullity inside an abyss.

One more "rossyanin" Neophyte with "who-knows" ethnical background.

What, the whole freaking thing is boiled down to a bastard word – Rossyanin?! It not only cannot be translated into any civilized language, but cannot be explained to a civilized person, too.

Your so called “theory of Russianness” (another freak of a word) nevertheless proves that I’m right and you’re wrong.

Point by point:

A) Felix Dzerzhinsky, as well as “rossyane” (or half-, quarterone-, one-sixteenth-rossyane?!) Pushkin, Fonvizin, Stalin, Yusupov, Frunze, Kamo, Tukhachevsky etc. was a subject of the Russian Empire, as all the Poles were for certain period. His political activities during the Bolshevik coup d’etate and the Civil War, as well as in their wake, were the activities of a Russian politician.

Since you’re not able to find a distinctive English (French, Italian, Maori….) equivalent for your preferred term “rossyi’sky”, the term is nonexistent.

B) As the political heir of the Russian Empire, the Soviet Union took over the entity as a whole, with all the assets and all the liabilities. In the same way, the contemporary Russian Federation is the heir to the former Soviet Union and cannot pick from the package on will – leaving nuisances like Molotov (and his pact with the buddy Ribbentrop), Beria or your obnoxious self to somebody else.

So let me, following your example, to coin my own term for you and your likes: LUBYANKA NAZIS.

Isn't it an all too obvious indication of an antisemitic mentality?

But dear REactor, it is most unfair to suspect our sworn “friend” RusIvan in anti-Semitic beliefs!

Just a cursory glance at his posts will show you that he is actually obsessed with everything Jewish and has quite an omnivorous vision of the Israeli practices. He is ready uncritically to implement their civil principles in his own country:

WHEN ISRAELITES ACCEPT ALL THIER ARAB CITIZENS AS TRUE "JEWS" I WILL ACCEPT YOU AS RUSSIAN.

....

What is working for Israel then works good for Russia.

You see, the thread is on Mark Steyn’s opinions on the contemporary Russia and her possible political future, and just from the blue skies RusIvan thrusts it to the Israeli side. He just couldn’t help himself – as Jobim sings in an old bossa nova of the 60s, “It’s obsession I cannot deny!”

Could it be however that he denies to Steyn the right to reason about Russia because he is obviously not Russian and, imagine that, even not a “Rossyanin”?

Could it also be that RusIvan, in line with his uncritical admiration of anything Semitic, defines Steyn’s ethnicity as Jewish just because the columnist so good in what he’s doing?

Alas, I have to disappoint you, Vanjusha.

Steyn is a Canadian - or, by the rules of your bloodline theory, Candiyanin:-)) - of Dutch descent, and vehemently Christian to that.

Oh yes, REactor, I understand what had led you to think he was an anti-Semite – the standard introductory statement of all Judofobes before they embark on their racist ranting:

I have many friends who are jews…

Hmmm, who knows, you may be right.

What, the whole freaking thing is boiled down to a bastard word – Rossyanin?! It not only cannot be translated into any civilized language, but cannot be explained to a civilized person, too.===

"Rissyanin" means citizen of Russian Em,pire today is citizen of Russian Federation. "Russian" means the people of russian ethnicity. Pretty simple why you don't understand I cann't realize.

In many countries the citizenship differ with ethnicities. SO many russian live in Ukraine, Kazakhstan and baltic countries. But those russians are NOT "rossyanins".

Same way many arabs live in France and ISrael. But in both countries they are not french or jews but are citizens of both countries.
Is it difficult to percept?

Felix was "rossyanin" the citizen of RE I agree. But he wasn't ethnic russian. Since he wasn't one then russians didn't has the responsibilities for his actions.

B) As the political heir of the Russian Empire, the Soviet Union took over the entity as a whole, with all the assets and all the liabilities. In the same way, the contemporary Russian Federation is the heir to the former Soviet Union and cannot pick from the package on will – leaving nuisances like Molotov (and his pact with the buddy Ribbentrop), Beria or your obnoxious self to somebody else.==

Russian Empire was run by russian czar and russian administration.
Soviet Union was run by anti-russian international commie power.
Look what they did with Russian Church! SO again soviets and soviet power are nothing to do even enemies of russianry.

So let me, following your example, to coin my own term for you and your likes: LUBYANKA NAZIS.==

So all those jews of Israel are "LUBYANKA NAZIS" ACCORDING TO YOU since they don't accept arabs in thier country as trully jews sametime they don't deny thier citizenship of Israel.
Me too I don't deny the citizenship of Russia for you and your kind but I don't accept you as "russian". Be your own ethnicities get off of russianry.

Man when there won't be no ethnicities under the sun then you definition will work not before.

SO again I take good example from Israel and repeat you: "WHEN ISRAELITES ACCEPT ALL THIER ARAB CITIZENS AS TRUE "JEWS" I WILL ACCEPT YOU AS TRUE RUSSIAN".

C) The theory that only the ones with a pure Russian bloodline are able and indeed have the right to form a reasonable opinion on events and processes in Russia would be laughable and worth of being held by a fan-club member and The Da Vinci Code aficionado... ===

Did I voice that theory? You distort some words and put it to my mouth for polemic sake.

Here on FR many people of different decents discuss Russia each day. I didn't ever refuse thier rights to do so. How I may anyway? It is absolute right of intelegent being to think about anything.

I just refuse you as impostor to call youself as "russian". You are foreigner as many here. Or maybe you are rossyanin the citizen of RF of different then russian ethnicity.

Felix was "rossyanin" the citizen of RE I agree. But he wasn't ethnic russian. Since he wasn't one then russians didn't has the responsibilities for his actions.

Really?

And how about "rossiyanins" with positive contribution to the Empire, former Soviet Union and contemporary Russia?

Will you agree that such did exist, or you want me to give you abundant examples?

Most importantly, do "rrrrushians" accept them as their own, or reject them as aliens together with the bad ones?

I thought you could do better, Ivan. The above statement is worth of Iva... As a matter of fact, Iva and Ivan do look in this thread like the two sides of one and the same split (i.e. schizophrenic) personality...

And how about "rossiyanins" with positive contribution to the Empire, former Soviet Union and contemporary Russia?

Will you agree that such did exist, or you want me to give you abundant examples?==

Agree such exists.

Most importantly, do "rrrrushians" accept them as their own, or reject them as aliens together with the bad ones?==

Accept them as citizens of Empire means "rossyanins". Good or bad.

Despite of all your pathetism Neophyte you may agree too that ethnicity and citizenship are different things.
It is all of our dispute.

I return to you: "Will you agree that such did exist, or you want me to give you abundant examples?"

Like arabs in France, Heitherlands, Israel. Like russians in Ukraine, Kazakhstan, baltic countries. Like jews in whatever coutnries except Israel. Like turks in Germany.

They all are citizens of relative countries but thier ethnicity is different then of title ethnicity which founded respectful country.

They all are citizens of relative countries but thier ethnicity is different then of title ethnicity which founded respectful country.

Their ethnicity is indeed different, I never denied that, but ethnicity doesn't matter. In civilized countries, ethnicity and faith are parts of private lives of citizens, and have nothing to do with their civil or public activities.

For the first time in modern Europe this was legally embodied in the Napoleonic codes which became a subject of admiration and emulation. But same concept is used by ancient Romans as well, who included not only the populace of conquered by them lands into the Empire, but even their gods into the Roman pantheon.

Quite different was the Greek/Byzantine notion - for them, ethnicity of the "barbarians" forever prevented the latter from becoming their real equals. And even more important role, as far as Byzantium was concerned, belonged to the Orthodox Christianity. Obviously, that is how this outdated and backward idea took so firm grip on Russia and Russians - that is, your likes in Russia, the group which luckily isn't neither typical nor representative.

title ethnicity which founded respective countries

This is a pure absurd. Tell me, what ethnicity founded the Netherlands? France? USA? Argentina? Russia? I would advice you not to become ridiculous, but I'm afraid I'm late - you already are, and insist to be seen as totally ignorant, too.

Their ethnicity is indeed different, I never denied that, but ethnicity doesn't matter. In civilized countries, ethnicity and faith are parts of private lives of citizens, and have nothing to do with their civil or public activities.===

Very liberal idea. COuntries, thier flag culture do not matter only people?

Yeah yeah tell it to those "frenchs" (accually arabs) who rioting today in Paris surberbs. See into it and you suddently find that only arabs who rioting. No french and no even blacks.
WHY so strict choice happened if ethnicity doesn't matter? Why only arabs riot and no other people of different ethnicities didn't joined them?

See it from other perspective.
If ethnicities didn't matter as you say then they would disapper as entities. Why to keep something which doesn't matter? Hence ethnic states like France, Britain, Sweden, Mexico and others would disappear too.
But it doesn't happen. WHY? If ethnicities as you say do not matter?

This is a pure absurd. Tell me, what ethnicity founded the Netherlands? France? USA? Argentina? Russia? ==

I don't know what ethnicity founded Netherland. But France was founded by french. Russia by russians. Israel by jews.

I think that maybe in distant future we may overlive the existance of national states and whole humankind will be united. THEN ethnicities will not matter and your dream came true. Not today.
But today national states and ethnicities still exist. SO be it.

Death tolls? Ok. I just do it one example since I don't have possibility to do it thouroughly. Let take POW death toll. In soviet-polish war 1920th Poland took about 100+ soviet POWs. During few years after the war they was killed by hunger and deceases in polish concentration camps. SO in 1939 USSR took about same or more polish POWs. Soldiers was sent thier homes. But officers was shot in Gulag in 1940. Katyn matter. How many? They say about 20 thousands. Here is comparison. 100 thousands vs 20 thousands. And remember Poland did it FIRST in 1920th but Soviet Union revenged in 1940.

This is another example of an outrageous lie, soviet propaganda and your incompetence.

I just do it one example since I don't have possibility to do it thouroughly.

I suggest you DO it thouroughly!

Let take POW death toll. In soviet-polish war 1920th Poland took about 100+ soviet POWs.Yes, there were 100.000 agressors, enemies of freedom in Europe imprisoned. BUT 16.000-18.000 have died in result of diseases such as typhus, deadly flu (spaniard?) and dysentery, common illnesses in that time. They weren't shot in the head!. They weren't sent to Sybiria! They were dealt with in more humanitarian way than you dealt with Nazis. So give me a break.

Here is comparison. 100 thousands vs 20 thousands. And remember Poland did it FIRST in 1920th but Soviet Union revenged in 1940.

You know that a "Auschwitz lie" is a subject of penalty? Writing that Katyn was a revange for 1920, when SU was agressor is a soviet era propaganda. Such things should be a subject of a ban on FreeRepublic!

Hello? SU == Soviet Union. You do understand that the Soviet Union existed between 1918 and 1991, right? The wars of the 1600s did not involve a philosophy that wasn't to be born for another 200 years.

In the times discussed= 1920-1945

Poland siding with Hilter in 1937-38

lol once more, lol. Anyone beliving in that nonsence is YOU

Writing that Katyn was a revange for 1920, when SU was agressor is a soviet era propaganda.==

Dear kaiser it is not propaganda. Accually during soviet times they said that it is germans perpetrated Katyn massacre.
It is at last years when we had known truth we undertsood given the character of Stalin that he did his revenge. Stalin is georgian means veru revengeful person. If in charge of SU at that time would be russian then those POWS was safe.

I don't know what ethnicity founded Netherland. But France was founded by french. Russia by russians. Israel by jews.

Neither of what you said above is true.

Neither Dutch, nor French, nor Russian ethnic groups existed BEFORE the relevant countries were created and matured. Every of these countries was founded by a bunch of different tribes, and no one of that tribes was called "French", or "Dutch", or "Russian".

Ethnicity doesn't foreordain nationality, it's the opposite way round.

The only exception is Israel - but she also hasn't been established by Jews in 1948, but by G-d several thousand years before that. Belonging to that ethnicity is conditioned by the belonging to the religion, not a tribe.

All I've told just now is an elementary school stuff. Which shows you as a silly, ignorant, obnoxious Nazi (or Commie, you choose yourself) agitator. Well, a stubborn one, I'd grant you that mush.

However, I deem any further conversation with you as nonsensical.

Neither Dutch, nor French, nor Russian ethnic groups existed BEFORE the relevant countries were created and matured. Every of these countries was founded by a bunch of different tribes, and no one of that tribes was called "French", or "Dutch", or "Russian".==

Yeah:))). Russian ethnicity already 1000 year old. I don't think that modern Russian state that old:). I don't think so. Same is for France or Denmark.

All I've told just now is an elementary school stuff. ==

Probably in that school where you learned that stuff there were problem with historical dates of events or else your teachers should know that russian ethnicity much older then modern russian state.

Which shows you as a silly, ignorant, obnoxious Nazi (or Commie, you choose yourself) agitator. Well, a stubborn one, I'd grant you that mush.==

Which show that you are abuse idiot which became mad and spit saliva on your opponents when your precious lies and disinformations got under scrutiny check:)).
You did it toward me, iva, jb6. SO shows that you just unintellegent thinker means stupid man.

Dear kaiser it is not propaganda. Accually during soviet times they said that it is germans perpetrated Katyn massacre.

It's like in a joke: Hey, Joe, I've heard that you got bitten in the forest prety hard!

Joe: Forest, what forest it was only a couple of trees...

I see that you refer to only one sentence...How convienient. I've just proven that you lost your sence of reality by overestimating the death toll of POWs (5 times!!!) as a result of illnesses, in order to compare them with MURDER i Katyn. That was your response to the post wanting you to compare the death tolls in Russia and in Poland over the years. ==

Kaiser80 we haven't to fight over this. Katyn matter and the matter of perished soviet POWs in polish camps both belongs to SOVIET polish controversy. Not russian polish. For example those POWS was mostly belorusses and ukranians with minority of russians.
Stalin decided to revenge them so he let go home all polish POW soldiers but shot polish POW officers. Stalin again is no russian but soviet leader.
Then Stalin decides also to hide his action so he put blame on germans for Katyn hence SOVIET propaganda told it during all years. That is it.

No as I don't condone Stalin' revenge but I have to point out that it was revenge means REaction as reciprocal done in return AFTER respectful action of Poland. By simple language: IF you don't like that they shot your officers THEN you hadn't allow your own to kill soviet POWs firstly.

Anyways Russia is here just wrong party in this.

When you try to blame her for soviet misdeeds I from one side reply you that Poland wasn't without sins herself in those years and from other side it was polish-soviet conflicts NOT russian-polish.

I already tried to explain that for me and for many russians Pulsudskii' Poland is same as Stalin' Soviet Union. Similar actions under circumstances then same sins and same guilts.

No as I don't condone Stalin' revenge but I have to point out that it was revenge means REaction as reciprocal done in return AFTER respectful action of Poland. By simple language: IF you don't like that they shot your officers THEN you hadn't allow your own to kill soviet POWs firstly.

LOL, so why do you write that Poles have killed 100.000 POWs?? What respectful action are you talking about? Man, o man. You have lost your ability to understand or you cant admit that you are anti-polish?==

It is not me. It is well known fact in Russia. If you ask everyone then he will tell you same. There were about 100 thousands of soviet POWS taken by Pulsudskii army in 1921. No one returned home from polish camps.

Man deathes are deathes. You cann't explain to victims that your had best intentions. And the stubborn fact stands: polish side started killings of POWs first.

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