[goldstategop]

Most Russians have regarded the collapse of the USSR as a tragedy. Still, there are no plans to bring together the CIS states into a new political union. A Eurasian Union would be an economic common market like the EU. But there’s no real appetite to run things from Moscow. If reintegration occurs, it will be an evolutionary process that could decades. Any attempt to reconstitute a Greater Russian state would be a disaster. Russian conservatives in United Russia are aware of how far they want to go. First and foremost is the preservation of Russian statehood. This takes precedence over any future union.

[buffyt]

I was in Leipzig in about 2000 and met a woman who had lived there while it was Communist East Germany. She was still angry with Americans for the fire bombing of Dresden during WWII, totally ungrateful for the deaths of allied soldiers like my Uncle Richard H Thoos. And she was so sad that they no longer had free seats to the opera at the city opera house. She sounded like she would trade freedom for opera tickets. She made as much sense as the WallStreet Protestors!