Posted on 09/30/2008 9:13:54 AM PDT by Publius804
September 30, 2008
Putin Wants to Follow Peter the Great
By Carlos Alberto Montaner
Russian ships no longer carry the names of heroic comrades but rather of figures from imperial history. As I write this column, the nuclear cruiser Peter the Great is sailing toward Latin America heading a flotilla of four imposing vessels. Some ships from the Venezuelan Navy will meet up with them to conduct joint maneuvers. Moscow wants to send a bill to Washington for the latter's support of Georgia, as well as for the independence of Kosovo.
The Peter the Great is the largest cruiser in the world. It is a platform for launching missiles. It carries 32 of them, and some can do away with a medium-size town. The story of the ship's name is akin to the convulsed Russia of our day. Mikhail Gorbachev ordered its construction in 1986, naming it the Yuri Andropov, to honor his mentor, the former head of the KGB, and prime minister who had died a few years before. However, it was finished during the time of Boris Yeltsin in 1996, and with time it came to be known as Peter I, the Great.
For Vladimir Putin -- who is really the one in charge in Russia -- it is a good thing to have the Russian flag defiantly waving around the Americas aboard a ship that carries the name of one of the people he admires most. Putin has a picture of Emperor Peter the Great in his office, and he is probably one of his most important sources of inspiration.
(Excerpt) Read more at realclearpolitics.com ...
I wouldn’t be at all surprised if Putin is Gog.
I can’t wait until Russia launches the Joseph Stalin.
I'm all in favor of it. Peter the Great is dead!!
Putin is too short to be Peter, but he does have something of an Adolph thing going for him.
Preventing the spread of the inhuman social system of Communism was worth American blood and treasure. Squashing Great Russian nationalism is not.
Just like the mortgage mess can’t be fixed without uprooting its causes (the sub-prime authorization in Clinton’s revamp of the CRA and the governmental quasi-guarantees backing Fannie and Freddie), the antagonism with Russia can’t be properly dealt with until its root cause—America’s wrong-headed Balkan policy—is reversed.
McCain’s slavophobia is the only misgiving I will have when I trek down to the local courthouse in a few weeks to cast a straight-ticket GOP ballot in early voting.
The ship “Peter the Great” was originally named after Yuri Andropov, Putin’s real inspiration and role model.
I think Putin should follow Catherine the Great and her Horse.
Peter the Great was guilty of many things but he was at least a man of vision who wanted to leave a stronger, more prosperous Russia behind him. Pooty is just a low gangster who doesn’t care that Russia is continuing to circle the toilet bowl so long as he and his cronies get their loot.
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