In Neo-Soviet Russia, Everything Old is New Again
Filed under: Russia
According to Forbes: "Twelve billionaires now hold seats in [Russia's] parliament, with a total net worth of $41 billion, sitting alongside the less wealthy lawmakers, worth merely in the hundreds of millions. The scale of wealth in Russia's government is unparalleled anywhere else on Earth."
Russian poverty is also unparalleled among industrialized nations. Russia does not rank in the top 55 world nations when evaluated for purchasing-power per capita GDP and Russians work for an average wage of $4 per hour. The nation's income inequality score rivals that of sub-Saharan Africa. Russia does not rank in the top 100 world nations for average male adult lifespan, there too languishing among the backward nations of Africa (Russia's scores for good government and corruption are similar Africanesque); the average Russian man doesn't live to see his 60th year.
Given this situation, which is no different than the horrific class stratification that existed in the early 1900s and gave rise to the Bolshevik Revolution, it can hardly be a surprise to see that Bolshevism is on the rise. Thus, the largest (indeed, only) opposition group in the Duma is the Communist Party, and thus the Moscow Times reports that last Saturday a contingent of over 50 National Bolshevik Party members pretended to be carrying out a wedding ceremony on Moscow's famous Red Square, but when they got close enough to the Square's most famous landmark, St. Basil's Cathedral, they "stunned the police [who were guarding the monument] by burning signal flares, holding up placards demanding 'freedom for political prisoners' and chanting: 'We need another Russia!' before police attacked them."
Those who cannot remember history are doomed to repeat it, until they learn or destroy themselves utterly -- as Russia is doing just now.
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