When he became President Putin disclosed: "when I was serving in the KGB in Germany, I always wore a cross under my shirt"
Since I believe him, I am willing to give him a break when it comes to governing Russia and dealing with the Muslim terrorists at this crucial time.
"When he became President Putin disclosed: "when I was serving in the KGB in Germany, I always wore a cross under my shirt"
I highly doubt he ever wore a cross under his shirt while serving in the KGB. More than likely he's attempting to dupe the Russian Othodox community (both at home and abroad) into going along with his increasingly authoritarian plans. Besides, how on earth could he be a Christian on the one hand and raise a glass to atheistic Communist murderers like Lenin, Stalin, and Andropov on the other? They are mutually exclusive.
Any guesses on his favorite philosopher?
| ..... W.H. Auden famously called the 1930s a "low, dishonest decade." What we see in Russia today is a low, dishonest decadence. Perhaps the most striking example of the way these factors shape Russian society is the country's progressive depopulation. Russia combines one of the lowest birth rates in the world with the death rate of a country at war. According to Igor Gundarov, the head of the Russian state center for prophylactic medicine, if present trends continue, the population of Russia will be reduced by half in 80 years, to about 73 million, making the present Russian state untenable. In the years 1992-94 there was an almost vertical rise in the death rate. Mortality rose one-and-a-half times by comparison with the second half of the 1980s. The rise was so dramatic that Western demographers at first did not believe the figures. The rise in the death rate was explained as a result of the sudden impoverishment of the population. Poverty alone, however, could not have been the reason for the rise in deaths. The economic level in the 1990s fell to that of the 1960s but in the 1960s the death rate in the Soviet Union was the lowest in the developed world. Gundarov concluded that poverty, state encouraged alcoholism, and the downgrading of the system of public health accounted for only 20 percent of the reduction in longevity in Russia. The remaining 80 percent was attributable to the spiritual condition of the population in the wake of the failure to offer any new ideal for Russian society after the fall of communism. "There proceeded an attempt to 'transplant souls' and replace the old, non-market soul with a new, pragmatic businesslike approach to life," Gundarov said. This change was unaccompanied by an effort to provide . . . a reason for which the change should be undertaken. For many people, who needed something to live for, this change was intolerable and they lost the will to live because life no longer had any meaning. Nikolai Berdyaev, the Russian religious philosopher, wrote that, In the soul of the Russian people, there should appear an immanent religiosity and immanent morality for which a higher spiritual beginning creates internally a transfiguring and creative beginning. In this, he saw the hope for the future. The Russian people, he wrote, need to enrich themselves with new values and replace a "slavish religious and social psychology" with a "free religious and social psychology." They need to recognize the godliness of human honesty and honor. "At that point", he wrote, "the creative instincts will defeat the rapacious ones." We and the Russian people are still waiting for "that point." |
A Low, Dishonest Decadence: A Letter from Moscow
The National Interest -- Summer 2003
By David Satter