Addendum 2—Putin’s Misidentity
©
While I have the greatest respect
for the difficulties that beset post-Soviet Russia
One of the reasons for my skepticism about Vladimir’s leadership is not because I suspect him of dishonesty and lack of transparency, but—as readily noticeable in the above link—his obvious identifying of himself as an urbanite. True, his parents, identified themselves not only with
The reason, why I emphasize
Vladimir’s lack of experience with the Russian countryside is that while I was
also born in an urban setting, the Soviet occupation of Latvia (1939) forced my
family a year later to seek refuge and survival in the countryside, which is
why at the age of seven, I became a country boy. At that age, I was still young
enough to switch identities. That I identified with the city, at first, is
evidenced by the fact that as a ‘city’ boy, I picked a fight at elementary
school with a country boy, and paid for it with a broken front tooth. It
introduced me to having new respect for the people who were dominant in my new
environment.
More than seventy years later, I
hold my ability to identify with the countryside as an essential ingredient for
my geopolitical and economic orientation with regard to the future. My
distancing from the urbanite set began early, at about the age twelve thirteen,
when in Displaced Persons camps, I discovered that all the patriots of Latvia
there were Latvian urbanites, mostly from Riga—even if they were born in the
Latvian countryside. The latter can be ascribed to the fact that in those days
the movement of countryside people to the more promising urban setting ended in
Riga (up to the time of independence—1918) a German city. Of course, today a
similar movement to an urbanite setting uses Riga Riga
So, alright. What makes the
countryside so important for the future, and what does it have to do with the
President of Russia, Vladimir Putin?
Briefly this: While the movement
of people from the countryside to the city was already notable in Latvia Moravian
Church ) to leave the countryside for Riga America
When I am arguing that President
Putin may not be the man to save Russia from the attacks of the West, I base my
doubts on such small differences or what French historians call longue durée (long term) influences on history. That
is to say, in the present economic setting, where the economy of the future is
explained by the media and politicians to the public as more of the same as in
the last hundred years http://www.bbc.com/autos/story/20131125-rebuilding-the-future
, moreover, in an increasingly urban setting, is likely himself suffering from
the longue durée cultural virus in that he has no idea of country
life and that it suffered a Stalinist like repression from a modernist movement
known as urbanism.
It is worth
while mentioning in this context that Pope Francis and the Vatican Vatican to try a hand at reestablishing the Holy
Roman Empire of the East (Jerusalem cum Constantinople ) in the West.
