Comes a Humanitarian
Filed under: Russia
If somebody had told you twenty years ago that within five years the mighty USSR would collapse like a house of cards and the cold war would end, you probably would have laughed at them.
Suppose they'd then told you that less than a decade after the collapse, the people of Russia would freely elect a proud KGB spy as their second-ever president, and sit idly by whilst he (1) assumed control over the national media, (2) abolished local elections and elections to the upper house of parliament, (3) jailed his leading rival (in Siberia, no less) and quite possibly (4) blew up a couple of apartment buildings full of innocent people to justify war in Chechnya and ordered contract hits on a series of public critics of his regime. Probably, you would have called for the men in white coats, wouldn't you?
And what if they then told you that right after all that happened Russia's most famous living dissident, Alexander Solzhenitsyn, who spent time in the GULAG and was then exiled for daring to criticize the murderous regime of Josef Stalin (who killed at least as many Russians as Hitler), would happily accept a prize for "humanitarian activity" from that very KGB spy, having earlier invited him over for a spot of tea and posing for photo op (as shown above) and not saying a single word about the creeping return of a Stalinesque regime, but only: "Our bitter national experience can yet help us in a possible repeat of unstable social conditions. It will forewarn and protect us from destructive breakdowns." In other words: Don't worry, be happy! That "humanitarian activity" for which he was rewarded by the KGB spy? In the words of the Washington Post, it was having "praised Putin for working to restore a strong state and echoed the president's accusations of Western encroachment."
What would you have said then? Maybe you'd have thought about that movie "Bridge on the River Kwai" and the scene at the end when the British officer, played by Alec Guinness, suddenly realizes he's spent the whole movie helping the Japanese to win World War II. Maybe you'd think, gee, I bet that sometime right before he kicks the neo-Soviet bucket Solzhenitsyn is going to have a look on his face just like that British officer had just before he got shot and fell on the dynamite plunger by accident.
Well, he will if there's any justice in the world, anyway.
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