POSTED COMMENTS TO A STORY IN TORONTO'S GLOBE AND MAIL
Rarely does any true revolution last.
And that is not a profound assertion when you consider what happens in individual family lives with dramatic changes in established habits or customs.
However, no country which has experienced a revolution is ever quite the same again; in that sense revolutions do have lasting effect. Louis XVIII did not rule with the same absolute authority as predecessors before the revolution.
However the author has inserted a highly questionable concept here, Putinism.
I doubt she could define Putinism, and if she tried, I doubt few would agree.
I also believe she has used this term to demean Russia's efforts.
After all, Susan Glasser works for Reuters, in the past a known CIA outlet, and for Foreign Policy , another outlet for subtle and consistent American propaganda.
Putin is simply one of those rare statesman-politicians who has a remarkable charisma. He is also extraordinarily intelligent for a politician.
Those are both qualities Russia needs in her long march from relative darkness and backwardness. Reconstructing a gigantic country like Russia is an immense task. It is not a job for the timid or people of unexceptional talents.
Russia has made great progress, considering from where they started, and I believe under capable leadership - not a drunken clown like Boris Yeltsin – Russia, given the intellectual gifts of its people and its incomparable natural resources, will be one of the great nations in not too many decades.
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Post Script : America's record in assisting and helping along Russia after the fall of communism was a deplorable one.
The pathetic ideologues running the United States at the time - and truly who else ever runs the United States, regardless of two parties? - made a colossal set of errors in just being happy to see Russia fall and not doing everything possible to strengthen its new political world.
Germany understood this, and poured billions into Russia, chiding the United States for doing so little at the time.
Susan Glasser is an intellectual child of that environment.
Her words must not be taken at face value.
