Russia

I was so sure I’d be first

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Well, after all, you do not expect Americans to notice that the Second World War began on September 1939 (sort of, if you disregard the real beginning, that is the Nazi-Soviet Pact). After all, it did not hit the United States till December 6, 1941, though there were plenty who had come over to fight with Britain. There is a memorial to the pilots killed in the Battle of Britain in Grosvenor Square, and their names are also listed on the big BoB memorial on the Embankment.

However, here is my posting on Your Freedom and Ours on the start of the war as well as the importance of facing up to the past.

Another aspect of Teddy Kennedy’s politics

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I am immensely grateful to Iain Murray (who is well known to Chicagoboyz, I am sure) for pointing out that it was a Spartan who first coined the phrase “De mortuis nil nisi bonum dicendum est”. Indeed, it was Chilon of Sparta and that makes me feel a good deal better about the fact that I cannot think of single good thing to say of the recently deceased Senator Kennedy.

At first I was not going to post about him though like everyone else I felt nauseated by the paeans of praise, especially those coming from the BBC. Apparently one reporter even had the bad taste to say that the Senator never recovered from Chappaquiddick. Well, no, but then neither did Mary Jo Kopechne or her family.

Over on this side of the Pond many of us recall Kennedy’s support for the IRA, both politically and financially. We have not forgotten his visits here, his rudeness to our soldiers, his interference in British and Irish politics or the help he and his family gave NORAID.

As the day progressed I realized that there might be no mention of Kennedy’s rather curious relationship with President Gorbachev, whom he visited in 1986, allegedly to promote better understanding between the two countries. It would be nearer the truth to say that he went then and at other times and sent messages in before and after to promote his own and his party’s position.

Think of it: a United States senator apparently saw nothing wrong in negotiating with his country’s enemies in order to find the best way of defeating the President and undermine Congress because the government was formed by the other party.

I have more on this over on Your Freedom and Ours. I should dearly like to know how well this is known in the United States.

Art in Motion

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A&L links to Kseniya Simonova – Sand Animation (Україна має талант / Ukraine’s Got Talent). A&L’s tag is “WWII as experienced in the Soviet Ukraine.” This is moving – even to someone like me, who doesn’t understand the words.

Perhaps I should rethink my satire of my friend who is addicted to American Idol. It’s an open market – and it has, like all open markets, found some real winners. Besides, there’s something flyover about its egalitarian approach. And something even nicer – national identity rah rah along with a kind of generousity of spirit that gives the whole world art.

I’m looking forward to learning from the many on this blog who are not monolingual.

Book Review: The Bloody White Baron

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The Bloody White Baron: The Extraordinary Story of the Russian Nobleman Who Became the Last Khan of Mongolia by James Palmer

Special note: It was Lexington Green who brought this book to my attention.

The 20th Century was remarkable for its voluminous bloodshed and civilizational upheaval yet for inhuman cruelty and sheer weirdness, Baron Roman Nikolai Maximilian Ungern von Sternberg manages to stand out in a historical field crowded with dictators, terrorists, guerrillas, revolutionaries, fascists and warlords of the worst description. Biographer James Palmer has brought to life in The Bloody White Baron an enigmatic, elusive, monster of the Russian Civil War who is more easily compared to great villains of fiction than real life war criminals. Palmer’s bloodthirsty Mad Baron comes across like a militaristic version of Judge Holden from Cormac McCarthy’s Blood Meridian or perhaps more like Hannibal Lecter with a Mongol Horde.

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